Taste of Cinema - Movie Reviews and Classic Movie Lists

10 Underrated Movies That Are Smarter Than They Seem

Sun, 24 Jan 2021 15:09:35 GMT

It’s not particularly odd for a film to be discarded as shallow and disappointing upon its release only to be lauded and adored years later. Audiences change, and what once was considered trite and strange could be seen in a whole different light by a newer generation. Sometimes it’s a case of a film not getting widespread acclaim but finding a small group of viewers who value it. Yet sometimes a movie’s message is misinterpreted as amazing human truth by a movie-list maker on the internet. Whatever the case, here are some films I consider highly underrated and the reasons why I do so:

10. The Neon Demon (2016)

Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn is known for films that are heavier on visuals than in story. Such was the case with his last film, The Neon Demon. Starring Elle Fanning as a wannabe model in Los Angeles, this horror thriller was not exactly looked favorably upon by audiences and critics alike. Giovani Marchini, in his review of the film for The Film Stage, wrote “any semblance of commentary is simply a posture for Winding Refn to cover his ass”. It currently holds a scanty 6.2 rating on IMDb and a rotten score of 58% on Rotten Tomatoes.

I think the film is more effective than the majority of people give it credit for. For starters, it holds valuable commentary on the fashion industry, and it portrays it through sometimes visceral satire. The film does an excellent job characterizing the disposability of bodies the fashion industry thrives on. It does so in beautiful fashion too. Winding Refn and cinematographer Natasha Braier bring the story to life with shots and lighting as dazzling as the characters that populate it.

The film asks questions (whether it answers them is another story) of identity, beauty, and the male gaze while telling a thrillingly fun story that is a mash-up of horror, sci-fi, and mystery. One of the main points of criticism of the film is the shallowness of the characters. Yet it could be argued that perhaps these characters represent the shallowness of the fashion industry itself, and probably are not unrealistic at all? Style and substance are wholly synchronous in this unique thriller. Don’t let bad reviews discourage you from checking it out.

9. To Die For (1995)

Now this one isn’t completely underrated. Van Sant’s black comedy was originally met with mixed reviews, yet has gained a sort of a cult following since. Particularly praisable is Nicole Kidman’s lead performance as fame-hungry Suzanne Stone and Buck Henry’s clever script. The film follows Stone as she cheats, lies, and murders her way to fame in a small American town. Kidman won a Golden Globe for her performance and the film did well at the box-office.

This is why I find it odd that it does not get much attention from modern audiences. It is a black comedy crime drama that should be on par with some of Coen’s 90s work in terms of acclaim. But it’s a film that has been half-forgotten, even when its message rings just as true today as it did in 1995.

In essence, it is a story of the avenues women must use to gain fame. The film portrays, in an exaggerated and darkly comic way, how women must take advantage of their bodies to achieve things in life. It is a thematically dense exploration of gender dynamics in relation to fame. In her review for The New York Times, Janet Masley writes “[it] takes aim at tabloid ethics and hits a solid bull’s-eye, with Ms. Kidman’s teasingly beautiful Suzanne as the most alluring of media-mad monsters. The target is broad, but Gus Van Sant’s film is too expertly sharp and funny for that to matter”. It’s a darn good story too. Violent, erotic, and wholly funny, it rarely missteps, and when it does, Nicole Kidman is so mesmerizing it’s hard to even tell.

8. Hail, Caesar! (2016)

The Coen brothers’ filmography is made up of thirty years of cult classics, Oscar winners, and occasional duds. 2016’s Hail, Caesar! is at risk of falling into the latter category. Which is a shame, since although it is obviously not their greatest work, it has a lot to offer. The movie revolves around various characters and is set in Hollywood during the studio era of the 1950s. Josh Brolin plays a hard-nosed fixer. George Clooney is an aloof star. Ralph Fiennes is an eccentric director with a short-fuse. It has a great cast and it’s a truly entertaining ensemble-piece.

The Coens make a comedic recreation of a completely different era of moviemaking. A sardonic look at a time when an actor having an affair could ruin a whole movie, performers were basically owned by their studios, and being a Communist could cost you your career as a screenwriter. The Coens bring this world to life with their trademark wit and style. While it’s not their most groundbreaking or thematically dense film, it’s a good movie that has not gotten the love it deserves.

7. The Beach Bum (2019)

Any Harmony Korine film could be in this spot. His offbeat 1997 debut Gummo, the polarizing crime comedy Spring Breakers, or even Julien Donkey-Boy. I’m choosing The Beach Bum because it’s a film that has been controversial and widely misunderstood.

It’s a comedy starring Matthew McConaughey as Moondog, a rich, pot-smoking, easy-going writer living in Florida. He lives in a mansion with his wife and spends his days partying and enjoying himself in general. An accident disrupts Moondog’s relaxed lifestyle and he is forced to reevaluate his existence.

Not only is it a hilarious movie, but it is open to varying interpretations. Many see it as a comedic portrayal of capitalist America. In a way, it is a classic story of riches to rags. Of a rich man’s fall from grace and discovering meaning above hedonism. Matthew McConaughey’s performance is fantastic, it almost feels like he’s been Moondog all along. The filmmaking is solid all around. It’s a film that’s all-around fun and well-made, it really doesn’t deserve the hate it’s gotten.

6. Stoker (2013)

South Korean auteur Park Chan-Wook made his Hollywood debut with this classy thriller. It stars Mia Wasikowska as India Stoker and Nicole Kidman as her mother, a widow who begins a relationship with her husband’s mysterious brother, played by Matthew Goode. It currently holds a mediocre 6.8 rating on IMDb and a 70% on Rotten Tomatoes. It wasn’t a failure, but Park’s film was unable to generate buzz. The result has been it’s near discarding into average movie oblivion.

But not only is Stoker an extremely well-made and acted thriller, but its story is a palpable depiction of predatory relationships. Mathew Goode’s Uncle Charlie begins to infiltrate the Stoker’s lives slowly, ingratiating himself to both women. He manipulates them subtly through gaslighting and other tactics and soon sets his eyes on seducing young India. The film is a very good depiction of the avenues of power predatory men use to get what they want. Its realistic depiction of family dynamics makes it a purposely frustrating and intense experience.

Told like a Hitchcockian thriller, mixed with Park’s frenetic directing style. It is a tight and intimate thriller that holds up on multiple rewatches. The performances are great all around, especially Mathew Goode as the suave antagonist. It, unfortunately, did not find an audience when it was released but has all the potential and quality to become a classic in hindsight.

10 Great Horror Comedies You May Have Never Seen

Sun, 24 Jan 2021 15:09:01 GMT

Although they seem to be polar opposites on the surface, horror and comedy are two sides of the same coin. In terms of writing, they both rely on a certain kind of buildup and a certain kind of payoff. Whether it’s comedic or horrifying, that built up tension and payoff often has a similar structure in the way that it’s written and executed on screen. Whether it’s a dark comedy, mockumentary, slapstick, satire, or something else entirely, horror consistently proves to be a solid framework for setting up laughs. Not only that, but the combination of the two genres is special in the sense that it can allow the audience to view otherwise frightening events through a comedic lens, providing an experience that isn’t quite possible in a standard horror film.

In addition to the work of horror comedy legends like Joe Dante, Stuart Gordon, and Sam Raimi, there are a plethora of different films within this subgenre just waiting to be discovered by more and more people. Whether they were inherently alienating, poorly advertised, or just overshadowed, the following films are some of the incredibly diverse horror comedies that most general audiences haven’t been introduced to.

1. Dead Alive (1992)

Mostly known as Braindead outside of the United States, Dead Alive is a film worth mentioning in any discussion or list of horror comedies. Anyone who hasn’t heard of the film may be surprised to find that it’s directed by Peter Jackson, the New Zealander who went on to helm the extremely successful Lord of the Rings trilogy. Before this success in big budget fantasy and adventure, Jackson made a series of movies that combined horror with outrageous slapstick comedy. It’s hard not to imagine what Jackson could have done within the horror genre had he continued making them past the 90’s, but his early films like Dead Alive are certainly enough to satisfy.

Dead Alive is set in Wellington, New Zealand, where a young man named Lionel Cosgrove (Timothy Balme) lives with his overbearing and inquisitive mother, Vera (Elizabeth Moody). While following Lionel and his newfound love, Paquita (Diana Peñalver), to the zoo, Vera is bitten by a “Sumatran rat-monkey” that carries a deadly disease along with it. Little by little, Vera develops a disgusting appearance and unusual animalistic behavior caused by the recent bite. It isn’t long before this amusing setup turns into a full-blown zombie film chalk full of blood and visual gags. While some of the gross-out comedy featured in Dead Alive may not be for everyone, it’s hard not to respect how outrageously gory and unique it is, even in comparison to the other great zombie films that came before it.

2. House (1977)

Have you ever thought about what a horror movie might look like if the story was created by a child? Look no further than the incredibly creative Japanese horror comedy, House. When coming up with ideas for the film, Director Nobuhiko Obayashi sought out the imagination of his young daughter, Chigumi Obayashi. She helped so much, in fact, that she was actually credited with the story of the film. The result is something so chaotic and disorienting that it was always bound to be divisive among audiences, but there’s no denying it’s memorability and audacity to do something different.

Some of the characters in House are fittingly named as if they came from the mind of a child. The main character, a young girl named Gorgeous (Kimiko Ikegami), has just been told that she will have a new stepmom years after her real mothers death. Looking for temporary escape, Gorgeous goes to her aunt’s house along with her friends, Kung Fu, Prof, Fantasy, Mac, Sweet, and Melody. From then on, it turns into an absolute bonkers haunted house film with constant flurries of intentionally sloppy special effects. While some of the supernatural events that take place within the house would sound legitimately terrifying on paper, the tone and execution of these occurrences make them rather comedic at times.

3. Society (1989)

Body horror is typically defined by its intense and graphic content, making the combination of this horror subgenre and comedy a bit more tricky than usual. However, there are some rare films like 1989’s Society that get that combination right. Society isn’t really supposed to be laugh-out- loud funny, but the directorial debut from Brian Yuzna was able to conjure up an interesting blend of social satire and disturbing imagery. While some scenes are sure to disgust, others contain lines that may leave viewers genuinely surprised at just how funny and unforgettable they are.

Society introduces us to the privileged world of Billy Whitney (Billy Warlock), a 17 year old boy who already feels like he’s living in a nightmare where the very mention of his rich, happy family makes him uneasy. Of course, this is understandable considering how strange they really are. His sister’s body seems to bubble and morph before his eyes, while his parents participate in strange activities like staring at garden slugs in their free time. It turns out that his suspicions are completely valid when he hears a recording of his family seemingly participating in acts that, at the very least, sound less than appropriate. As Billy begins to question what’s going on around him, more and more dark humor and outrageous body horror ensues.

4. Cemetery Man (1994)

Neither the first nor the last zombie movie on this list is Cemetery Man. This wonderful 90’s gem is directed by Michele Soavi, a man with an interesting history in the horror genre. In the early 80’s, Soavi gained experience working as an actor in films, some of which were made by italian horror director Lucio Fulci. He also got to work as an assistant director on several films directed by Dario Argento, a master of the giallo horror genre. In Cemetery Man, the influence of Fulci and Argento is definitely there, but Soavi also manages to create a surreal atmosphere that is entirely unique in itself. Of course, this atmosphere has its fair share of unusual humor, but it also contains some beautiful and thought-provoking scenes that will stick with you long after the credits roll.

Cemetery Man revolves around Francesco Dellamorte (Rupert Everette), a cemetery groundskeeper who resides in a small italian town. Francesco is a bit strange and always appears on edge, but he’s got a good reason: people in the cemetery are rising from their graves, constantly forcing him and his assistant, Gnaghi, to comically kill them once again. This becomes even more complicated when an unnamed love interest of Francesco (Anne Falchi) is suddenly bitten in the cemetery. As he kills more and more of the”returners,” the line begins to blur between what is dead and what is truly living, creating a strange and satisfying mix of dark comedy and dreamlike sequences.

5. Body Bags (1993)

When you reflect on horror legends John Carpenter and Tobe Hooper, which films of theirs come to mind first? The most likely answers to that question will include classics like The Thing, Halloween, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Poltergeist. While these films are endlessly rewatchable and certainly the most impressive, their frightening atmosphere is very different from the comedic tone displayed in Body Bags, a film directed by both Carpenter and Hooper, as well as Larry Sulkis. Body Bags is an anthology consisting of three segments, one for each director. In between each segment is a bookend by Carpenter himself, who plays a coroner that finds joy in the different stories of those lying in the body bags before him. Carpenter is perfect for this role, and it only adds to the playful mood experienced through the rest of the film.

The first segment, directed by Sulkis, is entirely set at a gas station where Anne (Alex Datcher) begins her first night shift. Throughout the night, she meets several characters ranging from creepy to humorous and everything in between. These encounters include cameos from Wes Craven, Sam Raimi, and David Naughton, making it a fun, referential time for horror fans. The second segment, directed by Carpenter, follows a middle-aged man named Richard (Stacy Keach) who faces a common problem: hair loss. Richard is hilariously self-conscious about it, and he goes to very excessive lengths to get his hair and confidence back. The third segment, directed by Hooper, delivers another surprising acting appearance with Mark Hamill as Brent, a baseball player who loses his eye in a car accident. After jumping at the opportunity to receive the world’s first eye transplant, Brent begins to experience strange visions and memories that could only be explained by the recent operation.

10 Great Movies Inspired By Greek Mythology

Sun, 24 Jan 2021 03:30:03 GMT

It has become almost a cliche to compare modern films to ancient myths, and yet it’s all too fitting a comparison, both a way in which to transfer stories across different generations. These stories get retold, re-screened, as they record a certain cultural experience that reflects the times we live in.

Film is especially uncanny to the practice of myth-making given how adaption is a staple within the industry. There are four versions of A Star is Born, twenty-six James Bond films and countless reincarnations of Dracula. We expect to see new faces revive old characters. What this tells us about movies in general is that on some level, we acknowledge their role as archetypes, as stories that are constantly being reshaped as the years go by in order to resonate with a new audience.

Rather than have people huddled around a night-time fire, telling stories of warriors and gods by a single source of burning light, today we gather in the darkness of the cinema, and again, a single source of light projects for us the stories of love and death, hope and loss. After all, the word myth originally meant simply ‘story’ or ‘narrative’ rather than having any grander connotations; but this grandness that we now associate with myth is a part of cinema too; the largeness of the screen, the sublime scale of emotions. We identify our most celebrated actors with ‘stars’, a fame that’s so large that it becomes almost cosmic.

Though there have been tons of films that straight-up adapt myths – Clash of the Titans, Jason and the Argonauts – many films simply borrow from these Classical tales, borrowing structure or character types. Some films are more flamboyant with their allusions, though they maintain their own story set in modern times. Some films can’t help but blend their own fiction with the ancient fictions that began this whole process of story-telling in the first place.

1. The Lighthouse (2019)

In addition to its dreamy black and white imagery, a haunting soundscape, and an ending that will give Eraserhead a run for its money for freaky electrical climaxes, Robert Eggers’s The Lighthouse was received with universal acclaim last year. A moody, surreal vision, fished out of German sea etchings and Greek mythology, Eggers’s film tells the tale of two lighthouse keepers who slowly lose sight of reality as they find themselves alone on a remote island.

Thomas Howard (Robert Pattinson) and Thomas Wake (Willam Defoe) both become entangled in an emotional battle for power. Howard feels as though his labour has been abused and that Wake is withholding precious information from him; the looming phallic lighthouse acts as a backdrop to their struggle, one that’s constantly in the periphery of the film, shining a harsh light on the two men as their masculinities ebb and recede in the tortuous time alone together.

Defoe’s character resembles the prophetic sea-god Proteus, whose ability to change shape is mirrored in Wake’s constantly shifting backstory, which evolves into a gas-lighting that helps drive Howard insane – he even envisions Wake as a tentacled, barnacle-ridden sea-creature. Eggers creates a masterful moment of suspense and climax where reality combusts; Howard ascends into the lantern room of the lighthouse, reaching his hand into the light source, a mysterious, other-worldly energy emanating from the lantern. After a moment of reality short-circuiting (a la Eraserhead), the film cuts to Howard’s Promethean fate (the titan who fatally stole fire from the gods); his body emerges through a thick mist, naked, disembowelled, and unbearably, still alive as seagulls pick at his intestines.

The film’s black and white imagery (curtesy of Jarin Blaschke) and 1:19:1 aspect ratio offer us a claustrophobic, old-world environment that renders the distinction between life and dream all the more obscure. But these aesthetic choices also echo back to Eggers’s visual influences, such as the drawings of the fifteenth-century painter Albrecht Dürer, or the German Symbolist artist, Sascha Schnieder, whose work deals heavily with mythology and folklore. The film also resonates with twentieth century psychoanalysis, where figures like Carl Jung used myths and archetypes to navigate the depths of the psyche. In The Lighthouse, mythology is richly used to explore the impending fate of the two characters, who fight not only against each other but against providence, the sea, the spirit-world, and the Unconscious.

2. The Warriors (1979)

Walter Hill’s cult classic The Warriors is well-remembered for its theatrical and dynamic depiction of New York gang culture, where gang leaders, though terrifying, vaguely resemble Scooby-Doo villains – zombie baseball players and violent mimes – this is all set to a backdrop of Andrew Laszlo’s NYC which brings to mind a sort of neon Hades.

In fact, The Warriors is loosely based on the Ancient Greek text, Anabasis, by Xeneophon. The title word itself denotes ‘ascent’ and ‘embarkation’, a mass movement resembling the urban journey that The Warriors must take from Brooklyn to their home turf in Coney Island. After being framed for the murder of a beloved gang leader (Roger Hill), the Warriors need to survive the night if they want to get back home. But like a modern odyssey, their journey is rife with peril and danger, as a bounty is publicly announced for their capture. In the original Greek text, Cyrus is a Persian prince and general, whose murder undercuts the war effort of the Greek mercenaries who serve him; in Hill’s film, Cyrus is reborn as a respected gang leader, whose ambition is to unite the various gangs of the city, to bring an end to turf wars and organise a war against the police and law-enforcers who continuously brutalise these outsiders..

The finale in both the Greek text and the film take place by the sea – in Anabasis, the marching republic reach the shores of the Black Sea at Trabzon, whereas in The Warriors it’s the shores of Coney Island. By inheriting this Classical structure, Hill’s film (as well as Sol Yurick’s 1965 book The Warriors, which the film is adapted from) creates a timeless story of men at war (literally, warriors) and the obstacles they face, external and internal. The Warriors makes explicit through its military Greek heritage that gang war is a matter of land – who owns it, who shares it, who populates it. In short, who runs the city.

3. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)

Despite being on the weaker side of the Coen Brothers’ filmography, O Brother, Where Art Thou? is nonetheless an interesting take on Homer’s The Odyssey. Set during the Great Depression, the film features Ulysses McGill (George Clooney) as an optimistic albeit naive Odysseus, who having escaped jail tries to make his way across the American South to reunite with his ex wife Penny (Holly Hunter), a rather demanding Penelope who has taken on a new suitor. Like The Odyssey, and like most Coen Brother movies, the film is primarily interested in the journey rather than the destination. It’s the detours, distractions and disasters on route that enliven the film as well as its original text.

But being a Coen Brothers movie, it’s hard not to read the various references to The Odyssey (and the unexpected, brash appearance of Homer’s name in the opening credits) as a satire on the nature of adaption. After all, the Coen Brothers don’t shy away from some very blatant references (Ulysses, Pete and Delmar’s infiltration of a KKK rally having an uncanny resemblance to the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion’s infiltration of the Witch’s castle in The Wizard of Oz). The film’s title is also borrowed from Preston Sturges’s film Sullivan’s Travels (its own name borrowed from Jonathon Swift’s book Gulliver’s Travels written in 1726). We are sent down a rabbit hole of references in this movie; the more we look into its sources, the deeper the drop.

As highly self-aware filmmakers, the Coen Brothers seem to be making a joke about the nature of historical adaption, rather than a sincere revival of Homer’s tale (neither brother had actually read The Odyssey when they made the film). And yet with flawless performances by actors like John Goodman, as the one-eyed, cycloptic ‘Big-Dan’, and a tantalising though odd-ball scene where our heroes succumb to the allure of three sirens, the film is nevertheless an entertaining watch. The source material, in the hands of the Coen Brothers, reaches some extraordinary and hilarious new heights.

4. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

A totally different take on The Odyssey was made in 1968, directed by Stanley Kubrick, and it’s perhaps one of the most iconic odysseys of cinema. 2001 is by no means an adaption, but Homer’s tale acted as a literary model from which Kubrick shaped the story.

2001 has had so much criticism, scholarship, and conspiracy surround it that the film evades any simple reading. Many critics have identified in HAL the figure of the cyclops, who Odysseus kills with a stake, not totally dissimilar to Bowman’s (Keir Dullea) murdering of HAL by inserting a small key into HAL’S processor core. The interpretations are endless, Bowman being identified as a modern day Odysseus whose skill in archery has led critics to speculate over the name ‘Bowman’. Though these readings aren’t totally arbitrary; Kubrick himself acknowledged that the way in which the Greeks were fascinated by the sea – viewing it as a vast space which contained the unknowability of the universe – feels very similar the kind of longing that exists in the twentieth century’s obsession with space.

Perhaps this kind of Classical reading of 2001 misses the point slightly, as do all readings that seek to locate a stable source for the work. Kubrick’s film is essentially about the unknown, universal phenomena that escapes human understanding, that escapes human time. 2001 demonstrates how myths have existed since the dawn of time and continue to influence the way we try to read the universe, a universe that operates under a non-linear, multi-dimensional frame. After all, time and space are drastically reshaped as Bowman enters the vortex. Past, present and future all collide into each other, which is perhaps the best way to look at the relationship between time and myth.

5. Funeral Parade of Roses (1969)

Stanley Kubrick has cited Toshio Matsumoto’s Funeral Parade of Roses as an inspiration for his own film A Clockwork Orange, perhaps in his depiction of an urban underground where violence and pleasure converge, as well as the heavy use of low-light and wide angles. But what’s especially fantastic about Matsumoto’s film is the way it retells the Greek text of Oedipus Rex by setting it in counter-cultural Tokyo.

The film centres on a young drag queen, Eddie, played by the actor and singer Peter, whose androgynous look often led them to play trans roles in Japanese culture. Eddie’s priorities include ascending in status at the Genet club, a nightclub whose name makes a nod to a queer father-figure. Whereas Eddie is a product of contemporary US culture (she would fit all too well into a Warhol picture), she conflicts with the more traditional geisha girls at the club, such as Leda (Osamu Ogasawara) whose relationship with the bar manager creates an Oedipal dynamic out of this found-family, a relationship whose conflicts are personal, political, cultural and erotic.

The film, so preoccupied with the fluidity of identity, takes on a variety of forms to tell its narrative (akin to the French New Wave films emerging at the same time), escaping into documentary, abstraction, and straight up Greek adaption (such as the climactic eye-gouging scene which through the heavy use of subjective shots brings a spectacular intensity to the horror of Eddie’s self-violence). There’s a history of iconic, agonised faces in cinema – the bloody-eyed nurse in Battleship Potemkin, Marion Crane’s scream in Psycho, Joan’s unsettling, soul-penetrating stare in The Passion of Joan of Arc – and the blinded Eddie, blood running from her eyes like tears, belongs in that mythic pantheon of cinema’s agonised women.

The 10 Best Samuel Fuller Movies

Sun, 24 Jan 2021 03:29:24 GMT

Samuel Fuller (1912-1997) carried in him the very spirit of American independent filmmaking. A longtime New Yorker and lifelong workhorse he began as a newspaper copyboy at age 12, was a crime reporter by 17, wrote his first of a dozen pulp novels at 22 – with titles like Test Tube Baby and Burn Baby Burn – his first of many screenplays at 24, fought in the United States Infantry in the Second World War, and began his directorial career – which would total 26 films across four decades – in 1949 with the western I Shot Jesse James.

A maverick in the confines of b-production his work spanned genres and styles but often sprang from the worlds of pulp violence, tabloid expose, and social protest, drawing from his journalistic sense and experiences on the crime beat, as well as war stories, which he would explore in films set in Europe, Korea, and Vietnam.

Characterized by the swaggering bravado of his dialogue and characters, (and the quirk of always having his good guys smoke cigars – and with Fuller there are always good guys) and visual flourishes that amount to battering his audience, Fuller’s style conveyed a strong sense of justice derived from often contradictory seeming moral convictions, a strong American patriotism and stronger anti-racism, and vision of American multiculturalism, an anti-authoritarian streak and a love of the US military, progressive protrayals of women and a pervasive machismo – all of which incurring slander and wild condemnations from one dimensional thinkers on both the left and right – usually a sign of doing something right.

Fuller’s legacy is not only left in his beloved films, but in a generation or two of filmmakers deeply in his debt, from the French New Wave directors credited with revitalizing cinema in the mid-20th century who considered Fuller among the best American filmmakers, to the countless auteurs to follow who have cited Fuller as a mentor figure and drawn from his work in their own – Scorcese using camera techniques from The Steel Helmet in Raging Bull, Paul Thomas Anderson using the same film’s opening shot for his own in The Master, and Jean-Luc Godard casting Fuller in Pierrot Le Fou as a mouthpiece for that much sought nature of cinema itself: Film is like a battleground. There’s love, hate, action, violence, death, in one word, emotion.

These are the 10 films of Samuel Fuller that you need to see.

1. The Steel Helmet (1951)

“All war stories are told by survivors.”

After directing two westerns for producer Carl Hittleman, I Shot Jesse James (1949) and The Baron of Arizona (1950), Fuller self-produced The Steel Helmet, a Korean war story reportedly written in one week and shot in 10 days on a $100,000 budget that would propel him to b-movie success and remains among the most loved and most influential of Fuller’s filmography.

The story of an American prisoner of war (Gene Evans) miraculously surviving point blank execution by a bullet that enters his helmet circles round his head and exits back out the front it follows his survival behind enemy lines with the help of an orphaned South Korean boy (William Chun) and the ragtag remnants of an American squad on its way to set up an observation post in a nearby Buddhist temple.

Fuller made the most of his production constraints with a tense, claustrophobic, and disorienting portrait of combat in dense foliage and gunfire haze. Life is cheap to Sergeant Zack (Evans), a man both hardened and broken by combat, driven more by survival instinct and balls than any standard operating procedure or heroic ideals of military service, for who putting yourself in the line of fire is called doing what you’re paid to do and a dead comrade’s worth is no more than the boots or cigars he leaves on his corpse.

But it’s also a film shot through with a humanistic spirit, as Zack develops a reluctant big brotherly relationship to the Korean boy he nicknames ‘Short Round’ (Chun), and an emphasis on the individuality of the soldiers who represent a diverse racial background and carry each their own personality quirks – the strangest being the conscious-objector priest and organist who lugs his portable keyboard through combat and worse – rather than portraying the unit as a faceless or racially homogenous embodiment of military force.

Though not his first directorial effort, the film introduced the world to Fuller’s unique brand of socially conscious bombast, breaking material still hot – the first American film on the Korean war, the first film to speak of American Japanese internment camps during WW2 – and invoking labels pro-communist, and treasonously anti-American for the same film elsewhere called a right wing fantasy.

2. Park Row (1952)

Dedicated to American Journalism Fuller’s personal favorite of his many films turns to his first love and first life in the underdog drama of New York’s historical Park Row newspaper district.

Following renegade newsman Phineas Mitchell’s (Gene Evans) firing from the Row’s monolithic paper ‘The Star’ for activities in protest of their influencing a death sentence in a highly public trial, he finds himself drinking in a bar of Park Row’s downcast and struggling set, other Star firees and amatures still looking for a break, and quickly inspires the overnight creation of The Globe, a new independent peoples’ paper in the print shop of Charles A. Leach (Forrest Taylor) getting together a ragtag crew and printing their first issue that morning, the leading story being the daring Brooklyn bridge jump of one of the bar’s drunks, and the injustice of his subsequent arrest – set up, of course, by Mitchell himself.

Much to the surprise and chagrin of The Star’s Ayn Rand/Cruella de Vil empress Charity Hackett (Mary Welch) these antics work, and the overnight creation of her cast off troublemakers quickly becomes a stick in the eye of her paper – especially once warring over the construction of the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal, an issue symbolic as it is historic, in playing to Fuller’s strongest patriotic sentiments, a defense of the democratic free press.

Park Row is a celebration of both the high and low of newspaper journalism, the yellow tactics used to push papers, and the noble ideals of Truth, Justice, and innovation represented by the photographic pantheon of Fuller’s journalistic heroes hung on The Globe’s wall, and is in this way too a kind of close-up on 19th century print and editorial technique and process both pre and post linograph machine, showing the excitement and enterprise of the daily news cycle.

3. Underworld, USA (1961)

A pulp revenge thriller admirable for its single minded simplicity Underworld, USA is a film of pure blistering hatred as Tolly Devlin (Cliff Robertson) – 14 year old witness to the murder of his father by four mafiosos – devotes his life to tracking them down and one by one bringing them to justice, either by law or by his own hand.

A street thief from the moment we meet him, (played in youth by David Kent) Tolly is caught in a burglary in his twenties and sent to the prison where Vic Ferrar (Peter Brocco), the only known assailant of Tolly’s father, is being privately held for his failing condition. Tolly learning of this quickly gets a job in the infirmary to get close to Tolly and shake the names of the other three killers out of him. Back on the street Tolly sees those three men staring at him from the front page of a newspaper, the three kingpins of New York crime – Gela, narcotics (Paul Dubov), Gunther, labor, (Gerald Milton), and Smith, prostitution (Allan Gruener) – all working beneath the underworld’s chief of staff Earl Conners (Robert Emhardt).

Doing what it takes to get close to these men, each better protected than the president of the United States, Tolly forces his way into the mob and rises through the ranks on loyalty and expertise. Along the way Tolly posing as a narco cop, enlists the help of Cuddles (Dolores Dorn), one of Gela’s girls, and reluctantly works alongside FBI man John Driscoll (Larry Gates), the arresting officer of his father’s murder who ten years ago he refused to help on account of not being a Fink. Meanwhile Tolly endangers and blows off the good intentions of Sandy (Beatrice Kay), an old friend of Tolly’s father and a mother figure to Tolly from youth as the only one who ever really cared for him.

Unfolding pretty much exactly as you expect, Underworld, USA is not a subtle film, but one with a strong sense of driving force and carried by the pitch black spirit of Robertson’s Tolly Devlin and near-apocalyptic tabloid hysteria of crime run amok drawing from a series of Boston Globe articles of the film’s own name by Joseph F. Dinneen.

4. Pickup on South Street (1953)

Pickup on South Street marks Fuller’s own part of the red scare as a cold war thriller that pits the New York City underworld against the work of communist spies. Pickpocket Skip McCoy (Richard Widmark) gets inadvertently wrapped up in the game of espionage picking the wallet of communist bagwoman Candy (Jean Peters) on the train, unaware of her carrying a stolen government microfilm and being smuggled out the country by her ex-boyfriend Joey (Richard Kiley) who has called on Candy for a favor unaware, and who is likewise unaware he has been under surveillance by federal agent Zara (Wilis Bouchey) who following Candy is led to the trail of Skip McCoy.

This sets in motion a kind of underworld scramble, the cops, the commies, and Candy all looking for Skip and the microfilm, trying to catch up to and play off of what one another knows, and chasing down a chain of underworld informers leading to stoolie Moe (Thelma Ritter) the fast talking information trader who can identify Skip from among the city’s many pickpockets by a few short questions on the technique he used to pick the wallet, and in this way circles all film around our elusive antihero Skip who always stays one step ahead of the audience and others, trying to play both sides in his favor.

The pickpocket scenes, shot in a series of extreme closeups – the fingers, the wallets, the expert movements made – intercut with Skip facing down his mark in an intense psychological exchange that seem (unacknowledged) to have provided the basis for French auteur Robert Bresson’s own masterpiece Pickpocket (1959) which, emptied of all the pulp tension of Fuller’s work, reproduces these scenes almost directly.

5. Forty Guns (1957)

Forty Guns is just one of Fuller’s handful of westerns, but as if to outdo Nicholas Ray’s tough-chick western Johnny Guitar (1954) which saw black-clad Joan Crawford packing a pistol gives Barbara Stanwyck’s Jessica Drummond a black-hat getup fit for only the baddest, an iron-grip on all of the Cochise county, and a gang of forty hired killers, forty men in her charge, stampeding behind her in the film opening’s forty-one horse tear across the plains like the run of motorcycle gang.

A wealthy rancher with defacto rule of the territory Drummond and her goons who ransack towns like vikings go unchallenged until the the arrival of bounty hunter Griff Bonnell (Barry Sullivan) and his brothers Wes (Gene Barry) and Chico (Robert Dix). A man of ideals about law and order Griff is an ex-gunslinger given up his right to kill, come to the town of Tombstone to peaceably take in a Howard Swain (Chuck Robeson), one of Drummond’s men with a warrant out for mail theft, but arrives to find the town living in the fear of Drummond’s forty and has to step in with violence when Brockie (John Ericson), Jessica’s drunken brother, shoots the enfeebled Marshall Chisholm (Hank Worden). And working to take care of Swain Griff invariably gets caught up in the Drummond business, while Wes tries to settle down with the beautiful gunsmith Louvenia (Eve Brent) and take place of the town Marshall, and both brothers try to convince Chico not to get caught as they did in a world of violence.

But while Griff and Jessica begin an antagonistic flirtation – Griff visiting Jessica at her villainous manor where she sits at the head of table forty-men long and takes dinner with her killers nightly – violence continues to escalate and puts Griff in the middle, with both his brothers standing target of the gang’s next outburst.

10 Great Serial Killer Movies You May Have Never Seen

Wed, 20 Jan 2021 14:49:05 GMT

It’s hard to define a “serial killer movie” as there can be a serial killer in all kinds of films; it can be a social justice film or it can be a political film. It can be about how we want to explore the psychology of those people, similar to “Angst” or “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.” Those two are also worth watching if you haven’t seen them, but then there are mystery movies, where we don’t know who’s committing crimes and we want to find out.

The following 10 films are all different from each other, but all are interesting or entertaining works. Some raise socio-political questions about the treatment of killers by the law, and some are trying to explore their psychology – to dramatic or even comedic effects. Some others are just mysteries where we want to find out what’s going on. So hopefully there’s something for everyone.

10. Jack’s Back (1988)

It’s a strange film that doesn’t necessarily appeal to everyone, mainly because its pacing can be off-putting for some, but there’s no denying that it’s an unpredictable and unusual film, even if the film’s basic plot would claim otherwise. The basic plot is set in Los Angeles and it’s been nearly 100 years since Jack the Ripper’s killings, and someone starts to commit copycat murders, or some kind of homage to those murders. A young medical volunteer gets arrested for their crimes and soon, things get complicated.

James Spader plays dual roles in the film; he’s that charming medical volunteer and then the curious, more serious brother. Spader had a great run in films at the time and even though he can still claim to have an impressive career, he’s had fewer and fewer movie roles and some might have forgotten that he used to be one of the most interesting actors of his generation; his performance helps to make the film engaging and intriguing. The film is directed by Rowdy Herrington, who later went to make “Road House,” a much different film, but he previously worked on the sets of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Repo Man,” which shows its influence on this film; its lighting, editing, and in color in particular. His career has been obscure since then but it seems he became friends with Spader as he starred in some of his later films, including an underrated, entertaining flick called “The Stickup,” which you should check out if you love bank robber stories.

9. Rampage (1987)

Its year can also be credited to 1992 as it took five years to get a proper release. The film’s producer went into bankruptcy and it was left in the air until Miramax picked it up. Directed by the great William Friedkin, the movie went through re-editing and a different ending in the 1992 version. You better check out the other ending when you watch the film; it’s obvious that the movie itself is tackling such subjects that Friedkin himself wasn’t always too sure what to think about. As for the plot, Friedkin himself explains as such: “It’s the story of a young man (Charles Reece) who kills random victims four days before Christmas. The novel examined not only the morality of the death penalty and the insanity defense, but issues such as justice versus revenge as well as gun control.”

Years later, Friedkin didn’t think he hit the mark with the film, but then again, that’s the way he thinks about most of his films, sometimes unfairly. If you check out his Charlie Rose interview to promote this film, he has a similar kind of disappointment with “To Live and Die in L.A.” as well, which is now much more respected and acclaimed. “Rampage,” however, is one of his most underrated films. Friedkin’s films sometimes raised controversies, such as “The Exorcist,” “Cruising” and “Rules of Engagement” – all for different reasons – and if “Rampage” had been seen by more people, it might get similar kinds of discussions as well. As usual with most of his films, it’s a film that is worth checking out and definitely will lead to discussions. The late, great Ennio Morricone wrote a great score for this movie that you should also check out.

8. Tightrope (1984)

Some of Clint Eastwood’s action heroes tend to have a dark side. The same goes for “Tightrope,” which you shouldn’t confuse with any of those “Dirty Harry” movies. It’s a different character and yes, it doesn’t explore the darkness of our lead character much, but the script is playful with that aspect, which makes this mystery story even more interesting to watch. It helps that Clint himself is fully committed and gives actually one of his finest, most underrated performances of the era.

As for the story, it’s about a sinister serial murderer who commits rapes and crimes in the red light district in New Orleans. The investigating policeman, a private regular in various rooms, sees himself drawn into the maelstrom of the crime until he succeeds in destroying the perpetrator. Wes Block, a single dad whom we’ll witness to be not so unfamiliar with those areas, soon realizes that the killer is familiar with the working methods of the police, because even after further murders there is not even the slightest bit of evidence. But then the killer block sets a trap through which the policeman himself comes under suspicion of murder. It’s not much of an action-y film, but the tone is intense, and the story keeps you guessing. Look out for Alison Eastwood as Amanda Block. The writing is very good, with some fine, quotable lines, delivered by Eastwood in the most delicious way.

7. Felicia’s Journey (1999)

Felicia, a young unemployed Irish woman from a humble background, meets Johnny, who is about the same age, in her hometown. After a brief romance, Johnny makes his way to England to, as he says, take up a job in a factory in Birmingham. When he said goodbye to Felicia, Johnny promised her that he would write a letter to give her his address as soon as he arrived in England, but no letter was received. Felicia’s father tells her that in truth, Johnny went to England to join the British Army, which makes him unsustainable for her father. Felicia doesn’t believe him. When she finds out that she is pregnant, she leaves her hometown and heads to Birmingham to find Johnny. While looking for Johnny, she meets the single elderly Hilditch, who works as a master chef and canteen manager in a large factory. He offers to let her live with him until she finds Johnny.

The 1990s was a decade where serial killer movies were in demand due to successes of “The Silence of the Lambs” and “Se7en,” but “Felicia’s Journey,” based on an acclaimed novel with a masterful performance from Bob Hoskins, stands out for several reasons. The interweaving of story lines may be unexpected for some audiences, but it helps to develop the characters even better. The superb performances make it worth watching, while getting the message behind the film may take repeated views.

6. Memoir of a Murderer (2017)

He killed his abusive father when he was a teenager; he decided that some people deserve to die, but the day comes for this serial killer when he ends up in an accident that results with him having degenerative Alzheimer’s disease. His conditions worsened through the years, but the time has now come for him to protect his daughter from her psychotic boyfriend.

As it is obvious from the plot, this is not your usual serial killer story and it goes to places you don’t expect. Like another film on the list, this has an alternative ending that you should check out as well and make up your mind on which one you prefer more. One thing for sure is that South Korean cinema stands out for their dark atmospheric thrillers, and this one is also among some of the most original ones of the recent years, even though it didn’t get much attention compared to some. Those who like “I Saw the Devil” may particularly enjoy this one, though it has a bit of a “Memento” spin on it, or maybe “Insomnia.” But it’s surely a ride worth taking. There’s also an impressive lead performance that remains fascinating to watch.

10 Forgotten Masterpieces of World Cinema

Wed, 20 Jan 2021 14:48:34 GMT

Cinema is one of the most direct forms of expression artistic voices have. Films are most often incredibly human and personal, allowing for glimpses into the lives of the characters a director/writer has created which in turn allows for a glimpse into the psyche and culture of the creators. Since this connection between creator and viewer is often so clear, cinema is also a fascinating way to understand other cultures.

There is so much to be learned from world cinema, no matter what country you call home. Chinese films feel different than French films that feel different than Japanese films that feel different than Italian films that feel different than Korean films. Though there are certainly some very well-known heavy hitters of world cinema, it is also important to look at some of the ones that slipped through the cracks. These films represent a fairly even spread of the world and of the century long history of this artform. Here are ten forgotten masterpieces of world cinema.

10. The Hands of Orlac (1924)

The legendary director of this film, Robert Wiene, has an extremely important place in the history of cinema. One of the founders of the German Expressionist movement in the 1920s, which produced classics like his own Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, the tale that popularized the classic vampire from Transylvania that is now a household name. This movement also serves as a sort of birthplace for the horror genre, including the aforementioned classics as well as the 1924 classic, The Hands of Orlac.

The film is about a famous and talented concert pianist named Paul Orlac. Orlac suffers a terrible accident, and he loses his hands. His wife tries to get the doctor to save his hands, as they are his life and livelihood. Though his true hands could not be saved, the doctor solves the problem by grafting the hands of a recently executed murderer onto Orlac’s arms. Once the reality of those hands sets in, Paul becomes maddened by them. He can no longer play the piano, and every dangerous object puts him into a rage, a desire to kill. Complete with the traditional motives and tropes of the Expressionist movement while also having a more contained and coherent visual style, this film is a wildly important statement that furthered the canon of cinema.

9. The Blood of a Poet (1932)

The Blood of a Poet is another very old film by another legendary director. Jean Cocteau was many things to the world and to the country and culture of France: filmmaker, poet, playwright, designer, critic, impresario, benefactor, and visionary. By far his most notable contribution to film was his Orphic Trilogy, for which The Blood of a Poet serves as the first installment.

This film follows a poet and artist through a series of poetically linked events, each as profound as the last. The poet creates a sketch whose mouth begins to talk to him. When he tries to wipe it off, the mouth appears on his hand. He then puts the mouth on a statue, who talks to him. Through some stunning visual effects, the poet then travels through a mirror and ends up at a hotel, where he sees certain things happen, each unique and yet still related to one another. The final sequence of the film builds towards a fantastically bizarre climax that is quite striking and quite memorable. This is a film everyone should see a few times in their life.

8. Story of a Prostitute (1965)

The first Asian installment of the list, this film by Seijun Suzuki doesn’t get nearly enough attention. Like all great films, it is about many things: love, death, tragedy, war, humanity, and pain. It shows the many dimensions of the Japanese psyche while maintaining a generally minimal tone both visually and aurally.

Story of a Prostitute is about a woman who volunteers to be a “comfort woman” on the Manchurian front. The volunteer numbers were very small, so only a handful of women were responsible for servicing hundreds of soldiers on the front. A sensitive man, Mikami, enters her room, who the main character takes to. His demeanor and treatment of her was unlike any she had received before, and she took notice. They were soon interrupted by Mikami’s superior, Lieutenant Narita. Through the eyes of our comfort woman, Suzuki shows us the wide array of human expression and human treatment while providing an interesting critique on the ideas of honor that are so innate in his culture.

7. Fantastic Planet (1973)

Another French film, this wonderful piece of cinema certainly stands out in style from the rest. It is the only animated film on the list. The director, René Laloux, began to dabble in animation in the 1960s when he was working at a psychiatric institution. He made his first film there, entitled Monkey’s Teeth, with the collaborator Paul Grimault, and later made Dead Times and The Snails with Roland Topor. With a potent combination of humor and political commentary, Laloux developed an immediately identifiable voice that permeates through all his work.

Fantastic Planet is certainly Laloux’s most known work. It is the fascinating tale of an alien planet that has two distinct species: the Draags and the Oms. The Draags are the ruling race; humanoid in form but blue in color, and the Oms are the oppressed race. The Oms are entirely human in their presentation. The better treated Oms are like pets, they are observed and occasionally played with. The less fortunate Oms are hunted and murdered as toys by the Draags. When one of the Oms accidentally receives a sort of education from a Draag, the Oms begin to unify and rebel against the Draags. A multi-layered commentary on humans, humanity, and human behavior, this film and its visuals are an incredible installment in the breadth of cinema.

6. The Burmese Harp (1956)

Another overlooked director in Asian cinema is Kon Ichikawa. His most famous work, The Burmese Harp, was released in 1956. A very honest and bleak yet beautiful and hopeful tale, this is a remarkable statement about morality.

The film surrounds a troop of Japanese soldiers and takes place during the final days of World War Two. The group must come to terms with the fact that Japan has lost. One particular soldier is tasked with finding another group of soldiers who are holding out in a mountain and convince them to surrender. Faced with a difficult combination of the feeling of failure, unrelenting pride in your country, and unwavering honor, the soldier adopts the life of a Buddhist monk. Unified by music, this film is an unforgettable journey through the experience of defeat.

10 Great Spy Films You Might Not Have Seen

Mon, 18 Jan 2021 15:13:19 GMT

Spy films can be a genre all on its own and be a subgenre under action, mystery, thriller, drama, and so forth. Therefore, time has depleted some great films. They either lacked recognition, got lost amongst similar films, or just never landed an audience. Here are 10 great spy films you might not have seen.

1. Lust, Caution (2007, Ang Lee)

In an ever-changing career, Ang Lee always hops around genres and here, he tackles the spy genre, delving into a complex web of lies, deception, and eroticism in China during the late 1930s and early 1940s. It tells of Wang Jiazhi, played by newcomer Tang Wei, who is tasked to seduce a high official, Mr. Yee, played by the incomparable Tony Leung, into an assassination attempt.

What starts out during the Sino-Japanese War, occupation, and the cusp of World War II quickly becomes a devastating background for the lost souls in this world. Lee creates a seductive mood and atmosphere in the film that lures you in just as Jiazhi does to Yee, even against one’s wishes. It’s certainly a drama that’s full of sexual prowess without ignoring the thrill of a spy film. Lee brings his expertise of complex human relationships and the use of historical Asian context in a film that deserves way more recognition today.

2. The Impossible Spy (1987, Jim Goddard)

A hero of Israel, Elie Cohen infiltrated the Syrian government that proved crucial in Israel winning the 1967 Six Day War. This is the story of Cohen’s bravery, sacrifice, and the testament to his nation. Originally airing for television starring John Shea and Eli Wallach, it was re-discovered in 2005.

The film has a low-budget aesthetic but makes it more effective due to the delicacy of Cohen’s mission, balancing a family life in Israel, and literally ranking high in the Syrian government, making it sound almost like a science fiction film in today’s terms. However, unlike most 1980s shoot ‘em ups or cliched works, it’s down to the heartbeat of the characters and his heroic venture on knowing gun placement that helped secure Israel’s victory.

The film has a great supportive role for Wallach, always adding depth, meaning, and grit to his roles, and here, certainly for Cohen’s sanity and well being. Goddard and the lead Shea do a great job on taking a huge story and bringing to a humanistic scale.

3. Flame and Citron (2008, Ole Christian Madsen)

A resistance film, spy film, historical film, war film, buddy relationship film, you name it. Madsen delivers in this Danish story of two legendary resistance fighters during World War II. Starring Mads Mikkelsen and Thure Lindhart, they encounter every type of twist and turn in this densely compacted story.

Drawing comparisons to Jean Pierre Melville’s “Army of Shadows” but in high compliment, we see the shady yet truthful side of the resistance, unafraid to put anyone in danger, and one that can die at any moment. Despite all of the thrills and plenty of drive-by shootings, it never detracts away from humanity, focusing on the why they are fighting and not just the actual action, adding true emotion to the film instead of a historical joyride.

Ranging from morality to sacrifice to consequence, it’s easily one of the best resistance films, and is stunning to look at and relate to in a modern way. It is not discussed as much as it should be, despite being one of the highest Danish productions of all time. Perhaps audiences just favor a London or Berlin story – but don’t short change this one.

4. Contraband (1940, Michael Powell)

Directed by Michael Powell and written by Emeric Pressburger, or better known as the Archers, in this second feature. Also known as “Blackout” and certainly a fitting title due to the precursor of film noir, it tells of a Danish sea captain stuck at an English port, coming in close contact with a Nazi spy ring.

From the dazzling cinematography in claustrophobic rooms, cross dissolves that feel like a fever dream, and thrills of the big scale despite being a narrowly focused feature, the Archers deliver one of the best films and the least recognizable. This was probably due to the classic masterpieces that followed soon after, but the legendary German actor Conrad Veidt does a superb job in grabbing the audiences’ attention and never letting it go.

The film never lets up for its short runtime of 80 minutes, but who can complain – the Archers give a great spy film amongst the maritime World War II British ports that knows what it is and can certainly be called one of the earliest great spy films.

5. The President’s Analyst (1967, Theodore J. Flicker)

What can the president’s analyst possibly do to harm the country? Well, despite offering a convincing argument, it’s more of how other agencies such as the CIA and FBI can control James Coburn, who can control the president and then ultimately the country. Yes, if it sounds far-fetched and ridiculous, that’s because it is. Flicker’s political satire and spy comedy of the late 1960s give you exactly the spin the genre needed at the time.

At the height of popularity of James Bond and the OSS series and so forth, people had to question the ‘what if?’ factor of all these agencies vying for power. Therefore, Coburn as the president’s analyst gets sucked up into a complete farce with fantastic production design and score into this trippy spy tale. He falls into the category of ‘it’s not me’ but has to chase anyway.

In the end, domestic and foreign agencies, robots, paranoia, brainwashing, and yes, psychoanalysis are in play to who can control the free world, but when it’s this wacky, and if you go with the story, you have a film that leaves a lingering impression, question, and visuals in the mind, much like a psychedelic therapy session.

10 Movie Masterpieces That Demand Patience

Mon, 18 Jan 2021 15:12:43 GMT

One common narrative about present-day mainstream (US) cinema is that it is too fast and shallow. The average shot-length of a Hollywood action-film is around 2 seconds. There is no time allotted to let the mind rest, it’s all constant action; fast editing, short shots, loud music and a lot of special effects. Now the meaning of the value of those films can all be debated, but it’s clear that mainstream cinema has gotten faster over the years. Such mainstream films often don’t demand anything from the viewer, no introspection of what is shown on screen, instead they are an almost desperate attempt to keep the viewers attention at all times in an era where there are many other distractions.

Slow cinema has often gone hand in hand with an appreciation for the symbolic and a love for the cinematic language. Slower films tend to become transcendental experiences, their demand of the viewer is part of what makes the film so rewarding, if done well. If, however, the filmmakers makes demands of the watcher but does not offer anything special a film can become extremely frustrating. A slow (and lengthy) film therefore has to go the extra mile.

It is therefore not to say that slower or more demanding cinema is inherently better. It is not., it just has different merits. Slow cinema works well for filmmakers and watchers that are interested in contemplative or existential cinema; that want to be taken on a meditative journey and like to have the space to think during a film. For those watchers here are ten masterpieces that you should not miss.

10. Solaris (1972)

Director Andrei Tarkovsky might be one of the most notoriously slow filmmakers. Tarkovsky’s films are characterised by their meditative pace, and often exhibit a dreamy quality. He tends to shoot movies according to an intuitive logic that demands the viewer to let go of standard film expectations, and instead let themselves float away in his highly symbolic and gorgeously shot scenes. ‘Solaris’ sees an astronaut go to a strange planet, consisting of a sea, where the previous crew has gone mad.

More so than director Tarkovsky’s other famous sci-fi work ‘Stalker’, ‘Solaris’ really takes its own pace and does not take the viewer by the hand. The film is a beautiful sometimes scary and often puzzling ride. It is not often that alien intelligence is portrayed as actually so very alien to our own way of thinking. Another must-watch for fans of slower cinema, and another classic from director Tarkovsky.

9. Harakiri (1962)

In 17th century Japan peace means the end of the usefulness of samurai. Without a purpose, one way to go out honourably is ritual suicide: hara-kiri. An old samurai (Tatsuya Nakadai) arrives at a clan’s house asking to be able to perform this ritual, but the clan doubts his seriousness, and tells him the story of another samurai that asked for the same thing last year.

‘Harakiri’ is a film about honour. Slowly but steadily the story unfolds itself, each time revealing more information about what actually happened. It asks difficult questions; what is honour truly, taking care for your family if it means abandoning sacred rituals and moral codes? Director Masaki Kobayashi shoots ‘Harakiri’ deliberately, with steady and well-placed shots, and takes a long time to build up his story and themes ending in an explosive conclusion. The film is a clear influence on Spaghetti-Westerns, with its duelling scenes, has inspired more action-oriented filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, and at the same time functions as a cinema masterpiece not afraid to ask difficult questions.

8. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011)

Director Nuri Bilge Ceylan (‘Three Monkeys’, ‘Winter Sleep’) is a Turkish director interested in existential themes, and prefers long takes, characters talking and a meditative pace. It is not surprising he is influenced by directors like Andrei Tarkovsky, Yasujiro Ozu and Michelangelo Antonioni. ‘Once Upon a Time in Anatolia’ tells the story of a group of policemen and doctors going out to the Anatolian countryside to find the body of a murder victim, but the suspect doesn’t remember the exact hiding place.

There is a lot of Tarkovsky in how the discussions of the men, stuck together for a day and a night, show the different viewpoints surrounding the themes director Ceylan wants to address. The children paying for the sins of the parents is an important one in ‘Once Upon a Time in Anatolia’, but also the complex and fleeting idea of ‘truth’. The film is shot as to be expected by director Ceylan, in long slow takes with a lot of attention to the setting and many Tarkovsky-esque symbolic shots. Beautiful, slowly unfolding drama from a filmmaker currently at the height of his prowess.

7. Love Streams (1984)

One of, if not the most, impenetrable film by director John Cassavetes. The multitalented filmmaker also plays one of the main characters, Robert Harmon, and the bad state of Cassavetes health adds to the character. It would be the last film he directed. ‘Love Streams’ tells the story of a brother Robert (Cassavetes) and a sister Sarah (Gena Rowland, Cassavetes wife and frequent collaborator) both lost in life and bereft of love. Robert is a miserable drunk who frequently pays prostitutes but pushes every real connection away, and Sarah relentlessly needs love from both ex-husband and her own daughter who is pushed away by her mental state.

‘Love Streams’ is a film which does everything slightly different. When an ex-wife drops of Robert’s supposed son, it’s not a story of reconnection. In fact Robert seems incapable to take care of anything including himself. Many scenes might have been played for laughs in other films, but in ‘Love Streams’ they’re just enormously tragic. It’s not a film with redemption arcs and has two thoroughly unlikeable, if pitiable, characters in the middle. Add to that little flourishes that director Cassavetes adds, like sudden jump cuts and abrupt music which make for a jarring effect, and you have a though demanding watch on your hands. ‘Love Streams’ is as unlikeable as its main characters, but it is a rich film for those who dare thread its waters. It goes to those corners of the human mind and human experience that we rather not visit.

6. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)

Director Andrew Dominik is an interesting filmmaker. He has only made three full-length feature films since 2000, and all are wildly different in style. The only real connecting thread is his interest in violent and self-destructive characters. ‘The Assassination…’ follows Robert Ford (Casey Affleck) who is obsessed with Jesse James (Brad Pitt) and becomes part of his gang. It is a story easily extrapolated to current times, mindful of the dangers of celebrity worship and idolization. Indeed Jesse James can’t live up to his fabricated image, he is a tortured and self-destructive man, and the tensions between the possessive Ford and the outlaw James grow more and more.

A special note should be made for the work of cinematographer Roger Deakins who really outdoes himself here, the train robbery scene at the beginning of the film alone offers some of the most beautiful and memorable cinematography in a long time. Cinematographer Deakins is definitely one of the main reasons that the film has such an ethereal quality to it, especially notable because ‘The Assassination…’ follows such brutish characters. It is a beautiful film about not-so beautiful, conflicted people.

The 10 Best Screwball Comedies of The Classic Era

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 14:24:03 GMT

On the heels of the Great Depression, American audiences were badly in need of a distraction. They looked to the entertainment industry and Hollywood came to the cinematic rescue. In trying to offer a respite from the downtrodden state of the country, a slew of comedies were unleashed on the public.

From the 1930’s through the 40’s (and a few outliers which came even later) Hollywood perfected the Screwball Comedy, a heightened subgenre featuring outrages storylines, physical humor and farcical situations. The much-needed laughter was eagerly received and filmgoers kept coming back for more.

This Golden Age of Screwball is jam packed with wonderful films and this list features just some of the many worthy titles of the time. Actors like Cary Grant and directors such as Preston Sturges will show up more than once as they contributed a vast amount to the genre. Here is a look back at the laughs, pratfalls and general merriment of a truly remarkable period in American film.

1. Bombshell (1933)

Jean Harlow’s screen career only lasted nine years but in that relatively short span she became one of Hollywood’s biggest names. Following her untimely death at the age of 26, her status as an iconic symbol of Hollywood’s Golden Age was swiftly secured. Her “Platinum Blonde” image and persona were often the focus of Harlow’s film characters and her famous screen presence is on full, sparkling display in Bombshell.

Harlow is Lola Burns, a popular Hollywood star exasperated by the people around her. Dealing with gold digging family members and a love struck studio publicist bent on scandalizing her image, the starlet decides to quit the business altogether. Upon falling for a wealthy Bostonian who is unaware of her stardom, Lola’s life takes hilarious and unexpected turns where all might not be as it seems.

Harlow carries the film with unbridled confidence and her male co-stars, Tone and Tracy, are a delightful match. It’s a fast moving, crackling farce that pokes pointed fun at the Hollywood studio system while offering audiences a bawdy good time. Meta before meta was a thing, Bombshell one of the pre-code comedies which got the ball rolling on what would become the heyday of cinema slapstick.

2. It Happened One Night (1934)

With a lack of faith from studio and the two leads reluctantly taking part in it, It Happened One Night surprised everyone becoming a critical and financial success upon its release. The film was the first of only three movies to sweep all the major Oscar categories, a most impressive feat for any production but especially a comedy.

Spoiled heiress Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) impulsively marries the cunning King Westley. After being whisked away by her disapproving father, Ellie jumps ship and begins a cross-country trek to reunite with her husband. While on a bus, she meets intrepid reporter Peter Warne (Clark Gable) and reluctantly accepts his help in getting back to her husband in exchange for an exclusive story. Through their journey, they begin to fall in love but not without some very funny misadventures along the way.

Gable and Colbert’s sparkling chemistry combined with Frank Capra’s effectively light touch establish a perfect marriage between slapstick and romance. It is a battle of the sexes, playing out with equal doses of exuberant charm and quick-witted feistiness. Over 85 years after its release, It Happened One Night is still one of the quintessential romantic comedies of our time.

3. My Man Godfrey (1936)

In the thick of The Great Depression, the disjunction between the classes in America was an evident aspect of the social climate. Some film studios addressed the issue straight on, releasing somber dramas detailing the struggles of the time. However, others, committed to providing escapist entertainment, chose to reference the issue within the confines of humor. My Man Godfrey is a shining example of this.

Assigned to find a “forgotten man” as part of a scavenger hunt, a wealthy socialite (Carole Lombard) finds the homeless Godfrey Smith (William Powell) at the local dump. She not only brings him home as a prize but also hires him as the family’s butler. Godfrey excels at his job, keeping life leveled for the otherwise eccentric clan. But could there be more to the mysterious Godfrey Smith than meets the eye?

In addition to being a delightful and acerbic comedy of manners, the film is also a grand showcase for its ensemble of actors. Powell is perfection as the title character and Lombard is at her luminous best. Alice Brady as the family matriarch is also a stand out as is Mischa Auer as her “protégé” Carlo. Incidentally, all four actors deservedly received Academy Award nominations for their work.

My Man Godfrey is high comedy. And though consistently hilarious, the film is also a sly social commentary veiled under a plethora of abundant chortles.

4. The Awful Truth (1937)

Improvisation in film has been an oft-used tool through the years but back in 1937, when filmmaking was still a very strict medium, it was almost an unheard of phenomenon. Director Leo McCarey encouraged the use of this method on the set of The Awful Truth and, though at first put off by it, the cast eventually embraced and relished in the process. The result was an instant classic, garnering McCarey a Best Director Oscar.

It’s been said that Cary Grant cemented his famous screen persona with his performance here as Jerry Wariner, half of a married couple who mutually decide to divorce after each spouse suspects the other of infidelity. Both Jerry and his soon-to-be ex-wife Lucy (Irene Dunne) quickly find new lovers but things go far from smoothly when each ex tries to sabotage the other’s attempt at romance.

Irene Dunne and Cary Grant had only been known for their more serious roles but they surprised audiences with their natural comedic abilities. They, along with Ralph Bellamy, make the transition to comedy with unbridled ease. McCarey’s decision in urging the cast to contribute improvisational ideas in shaping the film results in comedy gold. The Awful Truth’s hilarity works beautifully on its own merit but there is an added charm in knowing the collective artistic effort that went into it creating it.

5. Bringing Up Baby (1938)

The second of four films Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant made together, Bringing Up Baby started life as a proverbial flop. It also contributed to Hepburn being unceremoniously branded “box office poison” by film exhibitors of the time. The film, however, would eventually (and deservedly) become one of the most celebrated screwball comedies of all time and Miss Hepburn one of the silver screen’s most enduring leading ladies.

The spirited comedy finds Cary Grant as David Huxley, a soon-to-be married paleontologist on the verge of completing a dinosaur bone project. Hoping to receive a large donation for his museum from a wealthy benefactor, Huxley meets the donor’s flighty niece Susan Vance (Katherine Hepburn) who immediately sets her sights on the handsome zoologist. With a leopard named Baby in tow, the eccentric Susan wrecks hilarious havoc in David’s structured life and unexpectedly finds her way into his heart.

Hepburn and Grant are a formidable screen duo. Their dialogue and exchanges, along with their physical gags, are impeccably timed and executed (thanks in no small part to the immeasurable directorial talents of Howard Hawks). The film moves quickly, piling on the laughs almost relentlessly with nary a missed opportunity. Bringing up Baby has zany characters, a genius comic spirit and the kind of undiminished hilarity all comedies should be so lucky to have.

10 Must-See Films Made During Francoist Spain

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 14:21:53 GMT

Although contrary to simple intuition, repressive regimes often generate the most artistic expressions – perhaps, precisely because of their oppressive nature, which forces filmmakers to intellectually use humor, subtlety, and symbolism to present their view and critique society.

Francisco Franco’s 36-year dictatorship in Spain is no exception. Under his regime, which practiced great censorship of the film industry, a wave of filmmakers, including Luis García Berlanga, Juan Antonio Bardem, and Carlos Saura, rose to prominence and created a New Spanish Cinema. They revolutionized the film scene, bringing a host of dark comedies, art-house films, and poetic dramas to what was a stale industry of stereotypical, cookie-cutter melodramas.

Practically all of the films on this list are regarded as classic masterpieces of Spanish cinema and set the foundation for any Spanish film made after this period, making each of the following entries well worth the watch – even if you have to use subtitles. Those already familiar with Spanish cinema at this time will also be delighted to see José Luis López Vázquez, an actor often used as the prototype of the common Spanish man, appear three times in this list and twice more in the honorable mentions.

10. Mi querida señorita/My Dearest Señorita (1972, Jaime de Armiñán)

Released in 1972, the same year in which the suffrage rights of women became equal to those of men in Spain, My Dearest Señorita is the first Spanish film to focus on sexual orientation. Armiñán, whose filmography is full of characters on the margins of society and whose work aims at normalizing sexuality, collaborated with writer José Luis Borau to create this dark comedy about an elderly, unmarried woman named Adela moving to Madrid and adopting the masculine identity of Juan.

Because of the subject matter and the fact that it was quite taboo in Francoist Spain, José Luis López Vázquez, the star of the film, said My Dearest Señorita was the most dangerous job he has ever done. It is for this reason, however, that the film is so exceptional. The sensitive nature of its content pushed Vázquez into giving a virtuosic, yet subtle, performance, and the many challenges in which Armiñán had to go through in order to make the film are reflected in tasteful social critics.

Like most films made under repressive governments, My Dearest Señorita proves to offer something new – something you missed – each time you watch it. Not only does the film present critiques on strict gender roles and how societies based on dichotomies threaten singularity, but it also delves into themes of loneliness, the issues of integrating into modernity, the different challenges of provincial versus city living, and the collapse of the certainties of Francoism.

Ultimately, however, the film is about identity – the identities disguised during the dictatorship, the transformation and perhaps erasure of identities, and what Foucault called “the happy limbo of non-identity.”

9. La tía Tula/Aunt Tula (1964, Miguel Picazo)

Miguel Picazo’s debut feature film, Aunt Tula, also happens to be his most famous and well-regarded work from his four-decade-long career. Based on the 1921 short novel by Miguel de Unamuno, Aunt Tula offers a relatively simple dramatic plot, but Picazo’s delicate directing, Aurora Bautista’s utterly believable performance as Tula, and the film’s humble depiction of the rigid customs all familiar in Spanish culture offer a revealing glimpse into Spanish society.

The film follows a 31-year-old woman who takes on the responsibility of caring for her recently deceased sister’s children and widower, Ramiro. While she is completely loving towards the children and often caring towards her brother-in-law, Tula exhibits cold disdain and hostility towards Ramiro when he touches her and subsequently exhibits a desire to marry her.

Tula’s repressions reflect her religious beliefs and the strict social traditions surrounding her at this time. While casual American viewers may expect Tula to give in to Ramiro’s desires and provide the audience with a predictable ending, Picazo does not succumb to this troupe. Instead, he offers a more surprising close and leaves Tula essentially where she started – resigned to her unmarried life.

Although not the most well-known director on this list, Picazo’s classic film is worth the watch, and you can also catch him in a very small role as the doctor in The Spirit of the Beehive, which appears later on in this list.

8. El extraño viaje/Strange Voyage (1964, Fernando Fernan Gomez)

Originally a commercial flop, the “cult” movie Strange Voyage is now considered one of the best Spanish films of all time. Fernando Fernan Gomez, who is undoubtedly more well-known as a prolific actor whose career spanned over six decades, directed this film that blends aspects of thriller, suspense, black comedy, and noir to produce an absurd and morbid tale of three siblings who meet fatal ends.

The film was originally entitled The crime of Mazarrón, referencing the true events of the small village; however, Franco’s censors would not allow this direct reference to pass. Even so, Gomez conveys the story under the mysterious title of the Strange Voyage and manages to critique the hypocritical society under Francoist Spain.

Intelligently utilizing irony, humor, flashbacks, and a colorful ensemble cast, Gomez successfully reflects on the repressive nature of his characters and society at the time. Inspired by a conversation with Carlos Saura and in collaboration with Luis García Berlanga, Gomez draws on great minds to create this surprising triumph of a film.

7. La Caza/The Hunt (1966, Carlos Saura)

Carlos Saura’s first international success, The Hunt, borders the line between a simple hunting movie and a Spanish Civil War movie; however, at its core, the film is a psychological thriller of a place and a people inhabited by ghosts of the past. The story follows three middle-aged veterans of the civil war – José, Paco and Luis – and a teenage relative of Paco’s as they hunt rabbits in Seseña, a small province of Toledo. Each man enters the casual hunting trip with his own motives for meeting up and his own personal issues, which slowly unravel throughout the hunt.

At the time of its release, Spain started to open its borders and enter a period of economic improvement, but Saura’s intricately shot and masterfully slow-paced film proves that the Civil War, or at least its memory, has not been overcome in the 1960s. The film’s pacing combined with its setting – namely a sterile field that was the scene of a great massacre during the Civil War – render a stifling and oppressive atmosphere that aids in the depiction of the men’s mental decline.

One scene, in particular, lingers with the viewer until the film’s end: during a hunt, the men use a ferret to chase rabbits out of a tunnel. The ferret weaves through turns and crevices reflecting how the film explores the deep corners of the men’s minds. Then, when the ferret finally chases the rabbit out of the tunnel, Paco accidentally shoots both animals, heralding the death of the hunters by their own hand.

Like Alfred Hitchcock, Saura is a master of suspense in The Hunt and meticulously details the men’s psychological deterioration to the point in which the hunt becomes a reverse hunt.. As tensions and fears rise and manifest themselves into a cold-blooded fight, the hunter becomes the hunted, leaving the viewer with a shocking end and a need for reflection.

6. La cabina/The Telephone Box (1972, Antonio Mercero)

Made for public television, this short film of only 35 minutes and practically no dialogue may seem like nothing special at first glance; however, Mercero is able to convey more meaning in half an hour than many do in two. Financed by the state, The Telephone Box was originally intended to educate a changing Spain, as this film was released near the end of Franco’s regime. Although the film does depict modern city-life and Spain’s economic growth, it also illustrates the country’s dark underbelly.

The Telephone Box stars the ever so popular José Luis López Vázquez, who offers a compelling physical performance in this story of an average, suited man who becomes trapped inside a telephone box. Although there are many attempts, no passerby is able to help the man, and the seemingly innocuous box becomes a horrible nightmare.

Mercero presents his succinct story in three loose parts: the first introduces the film as a comedy and a social critic on Spanish society as the man gets himself into the absurd situation with the telephone box; the second reveals dramatic tension and suspense as he realizes he cannot escape; and the third turns the film into a haunting horror as the man – and the audience – finally realize his tragic end.

Any viewer of The Telephone Box will profess to its indelible, disorienting, and affecting nature. Perhaps, it is because the film echoes a common story of forced disappearances during the dictatorship or because it reveals Spain as a Buñuelesque society: a country that laughs at the misfortune of others, a society that takes advantage of its neighbor, and a neighborhood that is indifferent to a man’s cruel fate.

10 Great Surrealist Films You May Have Never Seen

Thu, 14 Jan 2021 15:27:31 GMT

Surrealist cinema came to life in the 1920s in the birth-country of many milestones in cinematic history: France. The surrealist movement is characterized by heavy use of symbolism, often in the form of absurd imagery. A surrealist film doesn’t have to be absurd or shocking though, it can just as well be an opposition to the standardized dramatic structure. In this list we will see a fair share of shock and absurdity, but there will be some films that are considered surreal thanks to their structure.

Every country seems to have their own odd-ones-out, throwing the rules of filmmaking out of the window and instead doing whatever they want to do. The USA has David Lynch, France has Jean Cocteau, Chile has Alejandro Jodorowsky, the Netherlands has Alex van Warmerdam, and the UK has Terry Gilliam. And all of these are just the prominent surrealist filmmakers that aren’t represented in this list. Instead we will visit Asia, Europe, and the Americas for some of the lesser known filmmakers or in some cases some lesser known film from a prominent figure in the world of surrealist cinema. Without any further ado, here are 10 surrealist film you’ve probably never seen.

1. Conspirators of Pleasure (1996)

All Jan Svankmajer’s strangest sexual fantasies come together in Conspirators of Pleasure. The story follows six regular folks, each indulging in a not so regular fetish. The individuals all come across each other in one way or another. A TV news reader has a fantasy involving carp, while her husband steals all kinds of materials to rub against himself. A shop clerk builds an elaborate massaging machine, while one of his customers is building a voodoo-like chicken costume resembling his neighbor and, in her turn, the neighbor has a doll that resembles him. That only leaves a letter carrier that gets a kick out of doing some grotesque things with little dough balls.

Jan Svankmajer is an influence to many prominent directors. Terry Gilliam, the Quay Brothers, Tim Burton, and Edgar Wright all expressed themselves more than positively over the stop-motion works of Svankmajer. Conspirators of Pleasure is just one of the many great films from his hands. Most of them are brilliant shorts, but there are plenty Svankmajer features to be explored as well. Alice, Faust, and Little Otik all are well worth your time as well.

2. Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968)

In the introduction to this article we talked about surrealist cinema not being exclusively absurd cinema. The intricately-title Symbiopsychotaxiplasm is a prime example of this; a surrealist film without absurd imagery or shock-value. This is one of these films that is surreal in structure.

In Central Park, New York City, director William Greaves has three film crews to his disposal. The first crew is instructed to document a cast of actors in their audition process. The second crew is instructed to document this first film crew. The third crew is instructed to document whatever fits into the documentary’s overarching theme: Sexuality.

The result of these three different documentations are interesting to say the least. Since Greaves left all of his crew in the dark from his real intentions with the film, it becomes an interesting experiment; a real-life character study. When the film crew starts questioning the competence of Greaves this of course is documented as well and shown in the film, adding so many new layers. It’s one of the most complex pieces of meta-cinema, but so easy to digest. Greaves his goal with Symbiopsychotaxiplasm was to capture life and reality as it is, coming from a dissatisfaction with Hollywood acting. Not only was this goal reached, it turned out to become one of the most brilliant meta-documentaries along the way.

3. Wizards (1977)

Back to absurdity, Ralph Bakshi’s Wizards is a prime example of the bizarre-imagery-filled surrealist cinema. In Wizards the evil mutant wizard Blackwolf wants to the claim the throne of his dead mother by using some lost military technologies. His twin brother, the sage Avatar and his team want to defeat Blackwolf and his forces to stop them from overtaking their world. The story is classic in nature, but the post-apocalyptic setting and absurd stylistic choices and imagery make it a great unique animation film.

Ralph Bakshi is a great visionary director. His adult animation films like Wizards, Fritz the Cat and The Lord of the Rings are all unique works of art, each highly overlooked and underrated. Bakshi is a director that deserves tons more praise for his work, Wizards very much included. With Wizards Bakshi switches between different animation techniques and treats us to beautiful psychedelic and impressionistic imagery, all the while telling a politically charged story. Wizards and all of Bakshi’s work is very much due to obtaining the cult following they deserve.

4. Magick Lantern Cycle (2009)

This entry isn’t a film, but rather a collection of films. The British Film Institute made this compilation of 9 of Kenneth Anger his shorts after UCLA’s Film & Television Archive and The Film Foundation did some restoration on the original material. Rather than using this entry for just one Anger short, this compilation serves as a great stand-in that, if you’re not familiar with him yet, can introduce you to one of the most prominent underground experimental filmmakers of the US. Magick Lantern Cycle consists of Fireworks, Puce Moment, the extended version of Rabbit’s Moon, Eaux d’Artifice, Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, Scorpio Rising, Kustom Kar Kommandos, Invocation of My Demon Brother, and Lucifer Rising.

Kenneth Anger has exclusively directed short films; around 40 since his debut in the 1930s. Many of his films take a surrealist approach and merge the themes homoeroticism and the occult. As one of the first openly gay filmmakers in the US, Anger had a big impact in the discussion of acceptance during the middle of the 20th century. His works should be celebrated for that, but not only that; his surrealist approach in both imagery and use of music, make his films not only culturally important, but also a blast to watch.

5. La Grande Bouffe (1973)

Four bourgeoisie friends consisting of a chef, a pilot, a tv producer and a magistrate, gather for a weekend at the latter his villa in Paris. Here the men await trucks filled with food and wine and they prepare a grand feast. Three prostitutes join the company for the feast that gradually turns macabre when the goal of the feast is made clear; eating themselves to death.

In La Grande Bouffe, or La Grande Abbuffata, director Marco Ferreri satirizes the bourgeoisie and the consumerism economy. At its release it was controversial for this reason, but since then it has gained cult status. Its controversy is still understandable and this film won’t be for anyone, since it’s filled with the grotesque results of vanity including sex with whores, feces and vomit. This is still nothing, though, compared with an entry in this list following shortly! Le Grande Bouffe is timider, focusing more on satirizing the themes. For this reason, it’s recommended as an easy entry in the subgenre of grotesque surrealism.

10 Great Movies With Character Actors In The Spotlight

Thu, 14 Jan 2021 15:26:50 GMT

What is a “character actor”? And where does such a specimen come from? Most of us are familiar with these players often becoming unusual eccentric types or the everyday matriarch or patriarch of a family. More often than not they can feel like distant, idiosyncratic relatives who have always belonged in our lives that we instantly identity by face rather than by name. Sometimes they have their moments, but most of the time they are severely overlooked for either the more suave or beautiful among them.

Do you feel as though you haven’t had enough “character actor” in your life these days? Then search no further as here is a compiled list of ten amazing films that give the character actor the spotlight to shine.

1. Matewan (1987)

A hallmark of indie-filmmaking, and one of the very best films from John Sayles’ filmography, Matewan provides the world’s introduction to the subdued, emotionally diverse acting of Chris Cooper. While Cooper’s leading man, Joe Kenehan, is not exactly a character full of grandiose movement or groundbreaking complexities he is one of total familiarity.

Cooper’s unique facial warmth, combed brown hair and unique lip curl are just the major trademarks from the guy we would continue to recognize (and adore) on screen for years to come. Cooper’s low-key yet methodical acting approach always finds himself consistently creeping into the spotlight until a particular scene is his. He would later win over audiences for his supporting performance in American Beauty, and even there, would utilize all the quirks he always brought to the table.

Matewan also happens to be a fantastic period piece (thanks to the actors and brilliant writing of Sayles) and therefore not only showcases a young Cooper but also touts a strong supporting ensemble brimming with familiar faces: James Earl Jones, Ken Jenkins, Mary McDonnell, Will Oldham, and Bob Gunton—Nearly all character actors in one way or another, especially Jenkins and Gunton. Jenkins would later embrace the kookiness of life as an aging doctor in the hit show Scrubs and Gunton never failed to fill the shoes of an oppressive bad guy—the kind of guy we all love to hate.

The film is written in ways few folks are capable. Sayles is able to carry his story while juggling the successful arcs of at least ten characters, allowing each to breathe and not get smothered among all the other moving parts. On top of this achievement, he gradually builds in historical context with the fusion of liberal and conservative political ideas that intertwine eloquently. Matewan is unashamedly American because of its refreshing take on the culmination of conflicting viewpoints and lifestyles—either thriving or stumbling.

2. Paris, Texas (1984)

It is doubtful that if anyone was asked to come up with a list of the greatest lead acting performances of all-time one would not easily suggest a performance from a renowned character actor. Harry Dean Stanton, a man usually left to the ensemble and lesser (but fantastic) supporting roles throughout his career, was finally given a chance to shine in Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas.

The heaping slice of Americana gives us Stanton wandering a desert, nearly hopeless, trying to find his way to something. Stanton had a startling sense of self and provided all his characters with pathos even if they were low-level scumbags or distracted every-day folk. The charm to his character actor persona is perhaps the rich fatherly aura he could bring to the many roles he played, whether it was Brett in Alien or the fanatical security guard in Avengers. The warm fatherly presence he purveyed makes his performance in Paris, Texas all the more appropriate. The role of Travis Henderson was the ultimate role, let alone leading one, for a man of Stanton’s ilk; a character possessing subdued qualities while simultaneously brimming with pathos.

Wenders’ remarkable vision regarding a lost, wayward man attempting to rekindle family values is one aspiring filmmakers and actors keep in high regard for a reason. The film is perhaps a monumental step forward for the character actor, maintaining that even quiet wallflowers like Harry Dean Stanton are capable of harboring the proper emotions without needing to utter a single word. Paris, Texas also flaunts a poetic atmosphere showcasing blues, reds and greens spread across open skies or empty parking garages. It’s a film that makes you yearn for more confrontation while simultaneously wanting to break away.

3. Bone Tomahawk (2015)

So-called character actors were typically more common and even more well regarded during the Golden-Age of cinema (just take a look at Walter Brennan’s resume and awards), usually finding solace among the genre pieces of their era: horror, comedy, sci-fi, and westerns. In today’s world while there are character actors abound, there are less and less able to find a ripe opportunity in one genre in particular: the western. It is a dying breed, so it was to my great surprise, to have stumbled over such a film as Zahler’s Bone Tomahawk. The film is an exceptional example of genre blending (horror and western) with an incredibly lovable cast of abundantly charismatic misfits.

Kurt Russell has always been one of those A-listers that can hold his own (and an entire film) but as he’s gotten older he’s almost entirely receded into the background playing badass dudes with amazing facial hair, and it works. His unlikely metamorphosis is probably a worthy debate to have with the nearest film nerd one knows—pondering and digressing over Russell’s status as an actor, but that’s beside the point.

The rest of Bone Tomahawk’s cast is a slew of character actors making the most out of a grand opportunity. Matthew Fox, known to many as Jack, is the sweetest treasure to be found in this piece; a highly egotistical, pompous gunslinger with the verve to back his bloviating persona. His performance is a sweet compliment to the more comedic and dramatic turns from the grandfatherly Richard Jenkins and the baby-faced Patrick Wilson. If you’re keen you’ll see a handful of others making quick appearances, and the film is all the better for having them there.

Zahler’s updated take on the western undoubtedly wrestles with complex themes of culture clash ultimately making more of a statement on the genre as a whole rather than specific sequences in the film. Due to the genre mash-up at hand, the film can easily steer away from these themes to become a mindless jaunt into a horrifying reality regardless of whom any of these people supposedly represent. The greatness of Bone Tomahawk beyond its phenomenal cast rests on the alluring use of sound and a Tarantino-esque rejiggering of the western genre.

4. Trees Lounge (1996)

Directed, written, and starring Steve Buscemi, Trees Lounge is another great example of those pesky familiar faces decorating our screens. Buscemi, who has had some leading roles throughout his career, has usually been more successful as the supporting type because of his peculiar mug and nasally voice. Trees Lounge is a highlight for the guy, and not solely because of his performance—he’s putting in triple time here, rounding out the resume with a directorial effort and solid writing credit. Clearly smitten by the influence of Quentin Tarantino, Buscemi gives the script some zing with an abundance of cussing along with the infusion of some quasi-philosophical chitchat.

The beauty of Trees Lounge comes from its honed in simplicity though. It’s a great little time capsule of the mid-90s and provides an intimate look at the lives of some regular barflies. The aforementioned time capsule effect also implicates the yearning for a simpler time; one riddled with regular social outings among friends at the bar and suddenly realizing that these friends are actually family. The scenes are driven by conversation and some deep moments of reflection brought to us in the form of still camera shots and warm music. The reflective moments successfully hit a little harder too when we constantly get small stings of comedy, charismatically uttered and flawlessly delivered by the ensemble.

5. The Master (2012)

“I’d like to get you on a slow boat to China…” Are words that still resonate to the cult following of Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, spoken by a man who’s now passed on in our world but still gave us so much in the roles he coveted throughout his short-lived career. Philip Seymour Hoffman, who started out in cameos in Anderson’s early work gave it his all opposite the enigmatic Joaquin Phoenix and alongside the consistently solid (and undervalued) Amy Adams.

The Master is a superb “relic” (too soon?) of two powerhouses meeting in the same arena. The film is one of the best examples of those films people watch strictly for the acting, as Hoffman, Phoenix and Adams deliver turns for the ages. Just look at Hoffman’s utter statue of a man fully tamed, Phoenix’s animalistic, soulless oil-black eyes that weep and Adams’ stern, emotionally dormant housewife… one can only believe these are real people with the way they take hold of their personal agendas.

However, Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master is a film that shows way more than just the supreme acting talent. Many may still find the story itself to meander and the film may not hold enough action to quell the thirst of mainstream audiences, but it is inarguably well crafted. The mise en scéne is layered and orchestrated with superb depth. The lighting and costume design in particular lead the way to accomplish immense visual style (just see about any scene with Phoenix), and these achievements further immerse the viewer into The Master’s world.

There are half a dozen scenes (minimum) that enact a virtuoso of conflict and battling personas. Anderson’s thematic work falls into place succinctly once the foils of each character break out into the open. It is no secret Anderson is a mastermind behind conducting phenomenal performances from his casts, and more specifically, building a certain relationship to its breaking point. One can even say the blowing up and settling down of emotions is something Anderson enjoys strictly to induce as a new past time. He’s always trying to orchestrate the next problem only to find a new equilibrium. Sometimes the winning ticket is subtlety though, and when the viewer is not experiencing an engrossing argument or physical beating on screen, they are being emotionally manipulated by the grimacing and visceral swooning of one of the best character actors to have ever laced them up.

10 Great Horror Movies Favored By Quentin Tarantino

Sat, 09 Jan 2021 15:45:16 GMT

When you look at a guy like Quentin Tarantino you just kind of know that he’s a horror movie afficinato. You don’t have to be particular with his films on an intimate level. You don’t have to know his backstory or his credentials. Just by casually listening to any conversation the guy has or any of his blurbs that come out about films, it’s obvious the man knows his stuff. A living, breathing encyclopedia of film and television with an insatiable thirst for content.

A full-time filmmaker who somehow, someway, has found out how to absorb more media in his lifetime than you or I ever could, even if we watched everything at 120x speed. He has dumbfounded actors by knowing their performances and nuances somehow deeper and better then they themselves even remember, sometimes down to the most particular detail in a performance that deeply matters to him. And when he explains it, he’s able to put it all into words that perfectly expound on that tip of the tongue, partial recall, vague explanation as to why you think something is good. A contextualizing machine that rivals your finest teachers and Forrest Gump’s mother combined.

Despite looking, acting and not so subtly BEING a horror film connousiour and expert, it’s worth pointing out that he’s never actually made a true horror film. Or, more accurately, he’s never made a film that lies too heavily in any one genre. But if you get out your magnifying glass and examine his work a little closer you’d see tons of your favorite horror film earmarks throughout his catalogue. Shady characters. Heists gone wrong. Swift, brutal revenge. Obscure 60’s music. Sudden, frantic, grisly violence. An over the top evil, cantankerous, vile, blowhard villain who you can’t wait to see be beaten, victimized and conquered. Samuel L. Jackson either screaming in someone’s face or intricately describing something vile he’s recently done with the same cadence and temperament he uses when calling in a prescription at Walgreens.

All things that have become synonymous with Tarantino’s films. Cultivated over a nearly 20 year career of homaging his heroes and serving up some scathing recreations of traumatic and shameful moments in human history, but presented with a sweet, thin candy shell of quirky and off-kilter snark and subterfuge. The heartworm pill in the piece of cheese, so you’re getting your medicine and you don’t even know it.

Never has there been a better poster child for someone who has given himself an education from films themselves. Whether it’s obscure 50’s westerns, or rot gut Italian horror video nasties, and sometimes old episodes of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air: he’s always listening and wanting to expand his palette. He has dipped his toes into the exploitation-horror genre before by crafting his own version of a slasher film with 2007’s Death Proof, penning the script (and co-starring in) the 1996 vampire flick From Dusk Till Dawn, and more recently claimed that his 10th, and rumored, final directorial effort could easily be his first all out horror film.

The internet even briefly freaked out back in 2005 when rumor had it that he’d be directing “The Ultimate Jason Voorhees Movie” but negotiations broke down and we were robbed of a potential film where a suit and tie wearing Jason gets real philosophical with Tommy Jarvis before carving him like a turkey while Joe Cocker’s cover of With a Little Help From My Friends blares in the background.

But if you’re truly dying to see just how twisted the vision of Quentin Tarantino can be, why not fall down the rabbit hole of some of the man’s favorites of the genre. From the expected to the obscure, you’d need a pen and probably a few weeks to compile them all, so let’s just just sample ten for now.

1. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

Called “the greatest movie that has ever been made and that ever possibly will be made” by Tarantino…when he was five…Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein was what the writer/director described as “the perfect blend of my most two favorite things at the time: horror films and classic, screwball comedies.” Granted, most five year old children don’t have favorite actors and actresses or are able to make genre distinctions quite like Tarantino can and did, but AACMF is undoubtedly a perfect gateway horror film that can appeal to both classic horror fans and more casual observers as its horror scenes are very clearly faithful to the mission statement of “Be Scary”, while its comedy element never really takes away from its core and mythos.

It only places heroes with infantile, bumbling naivety inside the Universal horror monster world and ends up being both a love letter to those franchises while also an easy to follow road map for people who can empathize with Lou Costello as he stumbles clumsily into danger. Influential and iconic, it definitely appealed to Tarantino’s freethinking scope.

2. Carrie (1976)

Regularly cited as QT’s favorite horror film of all time and made by one of his true filmmaking heroes: Brian DePalma, is 1976’s Carrie: an adaptation of Stephen King’s novel following a beleaguered young girl who has the power…to move you. In a time when demonic horror themed pictures were predominately portraying its protagonists as borderline dangerous and potential liars and con artists, De Palma dared to make you want to root for the bad guy (girl) more than before by putting you in the shoes of young Carrie, who is just mercilessly tormented at the hands of a group of scumbag high schoolers to the point where, yeah, you want to see her get her just desserts.

More character driven than many horror films of the era and focusing heavily on the plight of the victim, Carrie was a direct inspiration for Tarantino’s own Bride character of Kill Bill fame and he has cited star Sissy Spacek’s performance as his “favorite ever in a horror movie.” It clearly holds a special place in the man’s heart, as it will anyone who is bothered by just how cruel random strangers can be.

3. The Omen (1976)

If you only know The Omen as a reference point for other films, or have already had it explained to you in two sentences, it’s easy to want to dismiss it as a soft or tame film. Especially with its rather classy cast featuring big Hollywood stars like Gregory Peck. Or its quiet and only slightly foreboding trailer.

Tarantino himself recalled seeing it and thinking it would be “a nice horror film for older audiences” but was then blindsided on just how visceral and surprisingly gory the film was. “The interesting thing about it is that it’s a mystery. There’s an investigation going on there and you don’t really know if can trust it until maybe halfway through..” He was quick to also praise it as being particularly influential from a business standpoint, as it was the first of its kind to cast a star of the 50s in the lead to lure older audiences in. A practice that was repeated with stars like Charleton Heson in The Awakening, George C. Scott in The Changeling and Kirk Dougles in The Fury.

Tarantino was generally impressed at the film’s ability to portray itself so objectively and make you as a viewer come to grips with the reality of its true plotline. A nice treat for audiences who THINK they can surmise the film based on its age and their own firsthand knowledge of the plot, but who may be surprised with a present day watch.

4. The Night Stalker (1972)

One particular subgenre of horror that Tarantino has an affinity for is the Made For TV horror films of the 70’s, which many will forget, were pretty big deals to premiere at the time. Quentin has said he feels they “hold up better than most of the exploitation horror of the era — they have better actors..and they had really good stories!” QT’s particular favorite of the bunch is the ABC Movie of the Week from January in 1972: The Night Stalker. Adapted by horror fiction legend Richard Matheson and John Moxley (the TV veteran, not the AEW World Champion), The Night Stalker is a chilling story told from the POV of a man who MAY be a ruthless, hedonistic vampire pounding the streets for blood at night. Or maybe he’s just a regular guy who is having some problematic delusions and is suffering from a seriously bad night.

Tarantino praised its narrative and pacing, saying “the adrenaline drive of this thing just doesn’t stop!” and remembered fondly how well received it was at school the next day and how everyone was buzzing about what they had just seen. The film was a huge success at the time for ABC. Gathering the highest ratings of any of their made for TV films to that point. It even spawned its own sequel and spinoff weekly series.

5. The Mephisto Waltz (1971)

A lesser known horror film that Tarantino wishes more people knew about is 1971’s The Mephisto Waltz. Which stars Alan Alda, Curd Jurgens, and Jacqueline Bisset. Referring to it as “kind of Rosemary’s Baby in reverse,” it’s the story of a failed concert pianist turned journalist and how his chance encounter with Jurgens’ Duncan Ely character leads to him being able to live out his dreams of stardom and prestige. Which will appeal to fans of the horror possession genre.

But what Tarantino warns is how “you will not be prepared for the final 20 minutes” and heaps praise on how it veers off confidently in its own direction, while still being able to genuinely surprise him with how well the story wraps up.

10 Great Acid Westerns To Trip Peyote To

Sat, 09 Jan 2021 15:44:47 GMT

Something was happening to the western in the 1960s and ’70s. The old screen heroes were ageing out and so were their moralities. The Shootist (1976) saw John Wayne confronting his age and mortality, while Robert Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971) and Peckinpah’s Pat Garett and Billy the Kid (1973) cast the western’s classical heroism into an elegiac doubt. This was what came to be known as the revisionist western, a wave of westerns demythologizing, mourning, and critiquing John Ford’s west of good guys in white, bad guys in black, cowboys and Indians. Meanwhile from out of Italy came the so-called, spaghetti westerns, notably those of Sergios Corbucci and Leone, themselves already a kind of cynical deconstruction of the traditional western which replaced morality with greed and heroism with brutality.

But then there was another strain of western forming, frequently critical of the genre conventions but less interested in declaring the death of the western than revitalizing it and using its popular mythography to new and experimental ends in surrealist filmmaking. This was the “acid western” as Jonathan Rosenbaum would finally term it in his 1995 review of Dead Man, and marked the psychedelicization of America’s much-loved genre introducing it to the realms of the spiritual, metaphysical, and abstract, outside the historical setting traditionally essential to the genre.

The introduction of the conventions (or anti-conventions) from throughout the surrealist tradition, the psychoanalytic dreamstuff of Maya Deren’s At Land (1944) and Meshes of the Afternoon (1944), the absurdist allegory of Bunuel’s Simone of the Desert (1965) or Arrabal’s I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse (1973), the counterculture picaresque of Jodorowsky’s Fando y Lis (1968) or James Broughton’s Dreamwood (1972), and the archetypal minimalism of Philippe Garrel’s The Inner Scar (1972) or Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Eden and After (1970). At its best, the transformation of the western gunslinger’s wandering into a spiritual kind of seeking.

And what better place for an American surrealism than the desert plain, the untamed frontier, a dangerous and spiritual land, the great empty expanse, under stars, home of the mescaline yielding peyote plant, source of thousands of years of sacred knowledge. And what better figure to descend down into an American unconscious than the man with no name? The lone wandering gunman?

So here are 10 films that bring the world of dreams to the wild west.

1. Dead Man (1995)

Jim Jarmusch’s 1995 Dead Man is the western as a katabasis, the spiritual journey of a mortally wounded man passing from the realm of the living into the dead. The man is William Blake (Johnny Depp), a mild-mannered accountant – apparently unaware of his English-poet namesake – who has taken a train to the end of the line, to the industrial mills of Machine, USA for a job he finds no longer open on arrival.

After getting himself shot the first night in town – wrong place, wrong time – and killing his assailant in turn, he takes to the hills where he is met by a native man named Nobody (Gary Farmer), a great admirer of the poet William Blake who becomes for Depp’s Blake a kind of underworld guide. He insists he is a reincarnation of the poet and encourages a recalling of his past life. Pursued by lawmen and bounty hunters, Nobody and Blake flee through the woods to a Makah village where Blake is to be cast-off in a canoe to make his final passage.

The film follows Blake’s pursuit, hallucinatory visions, and transformations toward death. Shot in an ethereal black and white by the master Robby Müller, it is a film full of mystic imagery, and surreal, grotesque exaggerations of old west mythology. It quotes heavily from Blake, not only in recitations of his verse but in a screenplay that draws itself heavily enough from the poet’s work for Jarmusch to have called him a co-author from beyond the grave. Elsewhere the film draws heavily on Native American culture – with untranslated Cree and Blackfoot speech – and allusive of American poetry and ancient Greek myth.

The film most of all takes its character from a score by Neil Young, which is, in its muddy distorted improvisation, less a traditional soundtrack than a running commentary of guitar accents that react to the action unfolding on screen, sonically interpreting and narrating the events of the film as it played to Young.

2. The Shooting (1966)

The Shooting is a western from director Monte Hellman shot in 1966 under advice of Roger Corman back to back in with the more conventional Ride in the Whirlwind using much of the same cast and crew, allowing Hellman to take a risk on Carole Eastman’s surrealistic screenplay (written under “Adrien Joyce”) within the production of a saleable b-western.

The film follows Willet Gashade (Warren Oates), a miner with a dubious past, and his reluctant employment by a wealthy woman-in-black (Millie Perkins) as an escort across the desert to the distant town of Kingsley. Joining the two is Gashade’s dim-witted companion Coley (Will Hutchins), the last remaining member of his mining camp after the disappearance of Gashade’s twin brother Coigne and the mysterious murder of their companion L.D. by an unseen assailant, and later by Billy Spear, Jack Nicholson’s vicious man-in-black counterpart and a hired gun of Perkins’, whose introduction makes the escort party into something of a hostage situation.

Gashade knows the escort will end in murder, only he can’t be sure of whose, or why. As the party advances, they begin to run out of water and have to shed extra gear when the horses grow weak and close to death. It seems they are going to fry out there, but Perkins and Nicholson seem unconcerned, driven by some higher law or inarticulable purpose.

Opaque and ambiguous, riddled with questions of sanity, reality, and reason, The Shooting is quietly metaphysical in the best kind of way – often compared to Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot – the film seems to occupy that same strange edge-of-reality space.

3. Deadlock (1970)

Deadlock is a 1970 western from director Roland Klick and – probably the only of its kind – a krautrock western, scored by legendary German psych-rockers Can. In the spaghetti western tradition Deadlock is a white-knuckle standoff between three amoral vultures over a briefcase of stolen cash. Unlike Leone’s westerns, which insert the mythic figure of Eastwood’s man with no name into historical reality – between feuding families, between union and confederacy – Deadlock is set in a weirdo end-of-time ghost town nowhere where one wonders what these characters even want the money for.

The three-way standoff is between two robbers and backstabbing partners in crime ‘the kid’ (Marquard Bohm) and ‘Mr. Sunshine’ (Anthony Dawson), and a local miner (Mario Adorft), who as the town’s only resident beside his wife and a mute feral girl (Mascha Rabben) is also its self-appointed law. There is no motivation beyond simple greed. It is a distillation of the spaghetti western to free-floating archetypes, almost to parable.

Following the spaghetti western tradition the film relies heavily on its soundscape to build tension, an exaggerated foley against the empty arid desert (as in the wordless opening of Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)) but takes it further into a kind of synesthetic musicality which melds with hallucinatory imagery – the sound of a creaking of a sign translates in the kids’ minds’ eye to the rhythmic rocking of a boat – and the building of Can’s score from a slow and wide trance state to the explosive Bruce Conner montage freakouts of sun and guns and screaming when the film goes off.

4. Walker (1987)

Alex Cox’s 1987 Walker is the true story of American filibuster William Walker who staged a takeover of Nicaragua in the 1850s on behalf of a rail tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt under the guise of democratic liberation ideals. Cox uses the filmic convention of the western to satirically frame Walker’s story, which portrays him (Ed Harris) as an ironic lawman hero (think Verhoeven’s lampooning of propaganda films with the ironic fascist-optimism of Starship Troopers) and parallels Walker to the cowboy president Ronald Regan who began his career gunning down natives on the silver screen and was responsible for US involvement in Nicaragua’s contra wars.

The allegory is not subtle, Walker’s men are mercenaries and Nicaraguan ‘liberals’ essentially owned by foreign railroads reflecting the not-so-grassroots nature of the contra groups the US employed to fight Sandinista (around the same time as they were funnelling money to what would become the Taliban) and as the film goes on Walker’s reality is made to bleed right into the 1980s with more and more refuse from the future showing up in the past, Marolboros and Coca-Colas, M16s, and sportscars, climaxing with the appearance of a state department helicopter dropping a bunch of CIA men into the city of Granada.

It is a surreal convergence of timelines that suggests the repetition and interconnection of history, the story of Nicaragua 185X, of Nicaragua 198X – of the whole history of Western imperialism – from an era which itself declared liberal democracy triumphant over the political process and history at its end. The agitation on display did not go unnoticed. The film, distributed by Universal but shot in Nicaragua with a largely Nicaraguan cast and crew, essentially ended Cox’s career as a viable mainstream filmmaker.

With a jaunty adventure movie score by Joe Strummer Walker is a blackly funny movie, contrasting the noble speechifying of William Walker’s empty ideals with the blatant pillaging and exploitation which follows in its wake, and a surreal repurposing of the western genre which seeks to call the iconography of the entire genre into question.

5. The Last Movie (1971)

The Last Movie (1971) is probably best known as a failure for actor-director Dennis Hopper, who coming off the massive success of Easy Rider (1969) and feeling not a little messianic – Jesus Christ and Jean-Luc Godard rolled into one – essentially tanked himself with this overambitious mess and monetary disaster. But today The Last Movie stands up as a radical meta-perspective on the western genre and in many ways seems to presage Heart of Darkness films like Apocalypse Now (1979) and Fitzcarraldo (1982), and even predict the metafictional interest the production of these films would garner, with critics calling their re-enactments of war-party/colonial enterprises a kind of restaging.

The film follows Hopper as stunt actor Kansas, on a Hollywood western shot in rural Peru and explores an intermingling of the western within the western – full of hyper-violent Peckinpahesque shootouts – and chaotic behind the camera footage of its production, which is in its own way also a self-reflection of The Last Movie’s own production. The film plays with a precarious reality from the get-go, the audience never sure which reality they’re in when cutting to a new scene, as many of the scenes of the cast and crew still costumed hanging out around the movie sets are indistinguishable from the in-movie scenes of the same, and in one scene reminding of David Lynch’s Inland Empire, Kansas comes in from the countryside on horseback riding right into the middle of a live set apparently unable himself to distinguish the reality from fiction.

But the real trouble begins when the film wraps, the production up and leaves, save for Kansas and a few other stragglers, to find that they have inadvertently created a cult among a group of natives with no understanding of film who begin re-enacting the stunt-violence they observed for real, before effigy cameras and audio equipment, calling ‘action’ and ‘cut’ either side of real ritual violence. And soon, Kansas, an artifact of the original production becomes a sacrificial figure for the cult and is sentenced to death, held in the movie’s leftover set prison.

The film is not without faults, its detractors not without a point. The Last Movie feels like the product of exactly the kind of frenzied production it portrays – playing out kind of slapdash without a good sense of coherence or structure, too many characters to keep track of, and many scenes and subplots arising to go nowhere, but in this there is too an unstable energy hanging in the balance between madness and profundity. If nothing else The Last Movie is a terrific monument to a particular era of Hollywood and a uniquely American insanity – a bunch of hippies getting loaded and losing their mind playing cowboy in someone else’s country.

10 Films That Prove 1960 Was The Greatest Year In Horror Movie History

Wed, 06 Jan 2021 15:28:05 GMT

Ok movie buffs – If you had to choose a single year in horror film history to put into a time capsule for future generations, what year would it be? The task is a daunting one, and for some film fans it may set the scene for their own personal horror show. Ever since 1896’s The House of the Devil, horror films have only grown in number and sophistication, and now the catalogue is terrifyingly deep. But, as opposed to the more difficult proposition of choosing the single greatest horror movie of all time, the best year for the genre is a fairly clear pick in our eyes. We’ve plumbed the depths of the winding crypt that is horror film history to present you with 10 classic examples of scare fare certifying that 1960 is the year that had it all.

In many ways, 1960 was a year of transition; besides opening the door to a new decade of film, it also blazed a trail into a new cinematic era. Almost symbolically, both black-and-white and color movies feature prominently in this list, just as the films themselves were bridging the gap between a more heavily censored past and an age of more artistic freedom still to come.

A great cinematic awakening was underway, and these films were the laboratories for experimentation and growth which tested the boundaries of tradition. In our view, 1960 was the perfect sweet spot between conservative horror and effective horror – the ideal balance of intellectual, imaginative terror and visceral, accessible terror. Here are the 10 films which prove that 1960 was the greatest single year in horror film history.

1. Psycho – directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Having Psycho in its corner already gave 1960 a huge advantage in this contest. Many consider this to be the greatest horror film of all time, and for good reason – in Psycho we find the ideal combination of all the best ingredients that make up a beloved horror movie. A perfect storm of artistry and popularity merge here to create a film that transcends its own genre and its own era. Psycho barely feels like a Hitchcock movie; it lacks any dated features of the 1960’s; it confidently overthrows the popular plot formula; and it features a villain who would influence cinema for decades. Hitchcock’s masterpiece proves that quality art can also be universally loved.

The Bates Motel is by now an iconic part of cinematic history, but in 1960 it was still a mysterious little stop off the highway, full of secrets. When Marion Crane stopped there for the night, carrying secrets of her own, it felt like some kind of karmic alignment. She soon discovered the secrets of the motel and of its eccentric owner, and movie fans were blessed with a timeless classic as a result. Psycho proves year after year that it richly deserves to be one of the most popular films of all time.

2. Eyes Without a Face – directed by Georges Franju

Eyes Without a Face is a gothic horror classic that’s as unforgettable as its title. It features a brilliantly mad doctor whose experiments have (unsurprisingly) led him into morally questionable territory, with a bit of a twist – his main subject is his daughter.

After causing a car accident that led to the disfigurement of her face, the father is consumed with guilt. He becomes possessed by the notion that he can make his daughter beautiful again by means of a face transplant – and thus begins his experimentations with innocent victims.

Eyes Without a Face takes a look at the well-intentioned but ultimately superficial motives of the doctor and their effects on his daughter, who begins to feel that she is valued less as his child than as his experimental subject. It’s a beautifully made film, treating its horrific topic with elegance. The atmosphere is as surreal and dreamlike as the life of the poor girl must feel to her. With its poetic artistry and escapist flourishes, it’s a moody masterpiece that welcomes regular revisits.

3. The Housemaid – directed by Kim Ki-young

This South Korean gem is one of the greatest horror films you may have never heard of. But, now that you’ve heard of it, you’ll be doing yourself a major disservice not to seek it out. Featuring flawless performances which enhance the effect of a film already far ahead of its time, The Housemaid subtly expresses everything which 1960 censors tried to suppress.

When a pregnant and weary wife realizes that her housework has become too great of a burden, her husband starts the search for a housemaid. He finds a candidate without too much trouble, but the young woman is about to bring unimaginable chaos into their quiet home.

The horror of The Housemaid is the fear of an enemy in your own house – a terror that can’t be escaped or even acknowledged. Hounded day and night by a psychotic femme fatale, our husband hero is sure to wish he had taken up doing the dishes himself.

4. The Virgin Spring – directed by Ingmar Bergman

Famously inspiring Wes Craven’s later horror classic The Last House of the Left, The Virgin Spring is no less terrifying of a film – and a superior one, at that. Ingmar Bergman’s masterpiece of medieval horror is an intense tale of heartbreak and revenge. Featuring a towering and intense performance by the great Max von Sydow, The Virgin Spring sears itself into our memories on an almost archetypal level.

Adapted from a 13th-century Swedish ballad, this landmark classic continues to influence filmmaking today. Max von Sydow plays a loving father whose daughter is brutally murdered by three ruffians, who then unknowingly seek shelter in the father’s own home. As the circumstances slowly dawn on the man, a coldly calculated and efficient revenge strategy soon takes shape. The single-minded focus of the vengeful father is chilling to watch, and Bergman presents it with similar procedural objectivity. The beauty of The Virgin Spring is its mix of cinematic elegance and gritty terror. It’s truly one of the greats.

5. Peeping Tom – directed by Michael Powell

This is one of those late-blooming masterpieces which sadly suffered in popular obscurity at the time of its release. In an era of pushing boundaries, viewers stubbornly decided that Peeping Tom went just a little too far. Though the film is held in high esteem today, that is little consolation for director Michael Powell, whose celebrated career was dealt a mortal blow with the cold reception that Peeping Tom received. But alas, that is the fate of certain works of art, and today at least we see this one for the masterwork that it is.

The plot, which so offended critics and audiences at the time, is indeed a dark one – it follows a disturbed filmmaker who murders women while filming their deaths for his later viewing. But when one of his female neighbors starts spending time with him and becomes suspicious, his secret film life comes under threat of exposure. Peeping Tom is a brave movie ahead of its time, and it still has the power to chill audiences today.

The 10 Best Agnes Varda Documentaries

Wed, 06 Jan 2021 15:27:25 GMT

Agnes Varda is an auteur filmmaker commonly associated with the Nouvelle Vague or French New Wave Movement. Her career spanned from the 1950s until the late 2010s, during which she made a name for herself as both a fiction and non-fiction filmmaker. Impressively, the quality of films never wavered during her long career as evidenced by this list – The Top 10 Agnes Varda Documentaries.

1. Varda By Agnes (2019)

Varda by Agnes is a film where, on one hand, the title reveals everything – Agnes Varda tells the story of her own career as she feels it happened. On the other hand, this synopsis could never capture the full experience of the film. Varda’s essence, her personality is far too interesting, too complex to capture with any title.

In many ways, Varda is her own documentaries most valued asset. She is funny, charming and wise – consistently providing the film with unique and unparalleled insight. Career retrospectives can often feel bland or self-congratulatory, however, Varda avoids this through the level of detail she exposes about her work and artistic process. One instance, describes her using a track shot from left to right to disorient Western audiences who like to see things move right to left, the way they read. Between moments of insight like this and Varda speaking with her usual kind address, the film feels like a conversation between the audience and one of the most fascinating filmmaking minds ever, rather than a lecture.

In hindsight, viewing this film after Varda’s death is an incredibly emotional experience. The film speaks to the generosity of her character. This is a truly selfless and priceless educational tool for young filmmakers, one that provides detail on everything from camerawork to what a setting should mean to a filmmaker. Importantly, Varda by Agnes functions on multiple levels, it is an illuminating experience for her fans – highlighting some of the most intimate aspects of her films and filmmaking techniques but also perfect for newcomers, acclimatising them to the rhythms of a Varda film whilst also showcasing her greatest works.

Ultimately, the fact this film was made when Varda was 90 is incredible and a testament to her artistic credibility. To say, the film is a curtain call is perhaps too literal, however, as her last complete piece of work it’s phenomenal.

2. Salut Les Cubains (1964)

Varda made Salut Les Cubans four years after the Cuban revolution. The short documentary is comprised from photographs taken from her time spent in Cuba. It is certainly not a definitive document about a post-revolution Cuba, but the film never claims to be. Salut Les Cubans works best by understanding it as Varda trying to make sense of the country she saw on her trip.

Uniquely, the film is told largely from photographs that are edited together with Varda providing narration over them. The photographs are in grainy black and white providing the images with a rawness and an authenticity. Varda makes use of rapid cuts and fast paced Latin American music, injecting the documentary with its own pace and rhythm.

At times, it feels almost hypnotic. The rapid cuts Varda uses in her editing, bombard the audience with a variety of different images. By exploring Cuban culture in this almost a frantic manner, Varda help to communicate that Cuba is a country with a rich, varied culture that cannot be captured by thirty minutes of screen time. Not that this stops Varda from trying though, through her images, she takes us all over Cuba, inside and outside with seemingly reckless abandon and the excitement of someone who wants to show you every aspect, every corner of the world.

The diverse range of subject matter covered arguably alludes to a deeper message of diversity. Varda notes of the racial integration with the Cuban communities, how people of different colours and heritage live side by side. Some of the most beautiful photographs contrast a white child with a black doll and a black child with a white doll. Varda’s passion for the subject cannot be understated, here she is engaging with these ideas in a world that was that was also pushing for equality through the civil rights movement.

Concisely, Salut Les Cubains is a dizzying, exciting documentary where Varda provides a fun and insightful look into Cuban culture at a key point in the nation’s history.

3. Black Panthers (1968)

At one point in her documentary about the Black Panthers movement, Varda notes that the animal itself is ‘a beautiful black animal that never attacks but defends itself ferociously.’ Varda then clearly implies that the political movement is doing the same. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that she provides a touching, educational portrait of the Black Panthers and those involved.

Varda’s documentary takes place over an afternoon in Oakland, during protests against the arrest of party leader – Huey P. Newton. The Oakland Police Department has had a continued brutal and controversial relationship with the black community. In 1968, some of Oakland’s most documented issues with police brutality occurred. Specifically, 17 year-old Bobby Hutton was killed by Oakland police, while black people were regularly attacked and harassed by the police.

Importantly, Varda largely drifts into the background of her documentary, letting the members of the Black Panthers discuss their troubles and frustration in detail. Varda provides the members of the Black Panther Party with a platform to speak freely. The documentary has no agenda against The Panthers, which is refreshing in a time where other white media outlets definitely did. Varda only seems to be interested with informing and educating both herself and her audience.

The importance of this film cannot be ignored, especially in today’s political climate, where the same issues The Black Panthers fought against – police brutality and racially aggravated murder – are still seen plainly. The documentary ends crushingly. Huey Newton is found guilty of manslaughter and the police shoot at the Black Panther headquarters. Varda reminds the audience one last time, that black lives are constantly at stake in the world we live in – a world where the police are clearly another tool of oppression for white supremacy. If you watch only one documentary from the list, make it this one.

4. Daguerréotypes (1976)

Rue Daguerre was the street on which Agnes Varda was living during the 1970s. The film looks in detail at her local community, providing insight into everyday life itself. Varda presents the world of Rue Daguerre relatively unmediated. Her fly-on-the-wall style is occasionally accompanied by voice overs but, often, Varda lets the audience see the world of Rue Daguerre as it truly is.

However, this largely unremarkable approach allows for Varda to showcase one of her greatest strengths as a filmmaker – the ability to the find beauty and poetry in the benign and the everyday. Daguerréotypes never feels boring and the subjects, despite on the surface seeming unremarkable, are fascinating. Varda calls those who own shops on the street ‘artisans’ and small moments like this define the film. The shop owners to the unperceptive eye may seem like average people. Yet, Varda views them as people who have spent years honing their craft and become elite artists in their trade, who are worth celebrating.

Extending this, comparisons continue between these ‘artisans’ and Varda herself. Often, what they sell in their shops feel metaphorical to filmmaking. Take, for example, the clockmakers – for them to make a successful clock, every piece has to be performing its role precisely to contribute to a greater whole. This is the same with Varda and her films, where everything – lighting, camerawork, sound design, have to be precisely designed and masterfully assembled. Perhaps, this is why she includes the shop owners in the documentary, viewing them as kindred spirits.

In the end, Daguerréotypes examinations of the local communities is inspiring. Varda highlights to her audience all of the stories that exist so closely to within your own doorstep to create a truly moving and impressive piece of documentary filmmaking.

5. Mur Murs (1980)

Mur Murs, or ‘Wall Walls’ in English, is a documentary that looks at the murals within Los Angeles.

Murals have many functions and Varda explores several of the adeptly in the film. Varda comment that murals help to document and remember America’s ‘forgotten people.’ Movingly, Varda looks at how in LA, specifically, murals became a means for people in marginalised communities to tell their own stories in their own way. Murals help the marginalised to assert their existence to others who may ignore them, in a creative fashion using stunning and vibrant colours.

Varda’ s film’s cinematography benefits from the beautiful and often colourful murals. Varda regularly foregrounds them, highlighting the importance they bring to the city of Los Angeles. Varda alternatively captures the murals in close ups and long shots, taking in both their details and specifics whilst also taking account of their scale and size. Interestingly, Varda captures people alongside the murals, reminding the audience the size of the artwork. Large paintings have the power to humble people, the sheer scale can remind the audience just how small they are in regards to the wider world. The murals do this, helping to remove the viewer from thinking of the minutia of their own, small worlds and consider others and the wider world as a whole.

Ultimately, Varda dissects the paradox of the mural noting that it displays very private, intimate parts of ourselves to the public. However, by people being brave enough to do this, the art provides a more accurate representation of modern day California. One that presents the images of what really is happening to its people. Mur Murs is Varda at her most thought-provoking.

The 20 Best Horror Movies of 2020

Wed, 06 Jan 2021 03:03:18 GMT

Wow. Well, now that 2020 is finally in the rear view it’s safe to say that, as challenging and worrisome as the year was (we’re looking at you, COVID-19), it was an exceptionally strong year for genre films.

The following list of 20 horror titles rates and ranks what have been Taste of Cinema’s favorites for the year, but it’s worth pointing out that several anticipated fright films (Michael Chaves’s The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, Scott Cooper’s Antlers, Nia DaCosta’s Candyman, Rose Glass’s Saint Maud, John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place: Part II, and James Wan’s Malignant, amongst them) never got their promised release dates, owing to the pandemic, but hopefully will see some kind of safe release in ‘21

A few shoutouts also deserve going out to some excellent genre films that didn’t make this list but are still mentioned in the “Honorable Mention” section, all of which are worth a watch for horror junkies.

And now, without further ado, here are our fave fright flicks of 2020, and be sure to join the conversation in the comments section below (be nice!). Enjoy.

20. The Lodge

This American-British horror film from writers-directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala had genre fans pumping their fists in anticipation thanks to their previously well-played full-on psychological freakout from 2014, Goodnight Mommy. And if you’re a fan of deep dark terror of the slow-burning variety, The Lodge does not disappoint.

Catalyzed by grief and the ghost of suicide, this twisted tale focuses on two siblings, Aidan (Jaeden Martell) and Mia (Lia McHugh) who are still reeling from the loss of their mother when their father (Richard Armitage) too swiftly pulls them into a new relationship with his new bride-to-be, Grace (Riley Keough, excellent).

Brace yourself for an unsettling stay in the titular abode as Grace and her stepchildren have it out in the most macabre of ways as the biggest and baddest disturbances and reveals are saved for the bitter end.

19. Scare Me

A delightfully droll horror anthology (of sorts) that had us grinning and guessing from the get go. This low-budget but highly creative indie earns bonus points for Aya Cash (The Boys) and costar Josh Ruben (who also wrote and directed) wringing laughs, derision and some very choice scares throughout.

During a power outage in a remote cabin in the Catskills, two recently acquainted neighbours, Fred (Ruben) and Fanny (Cash), who are also rival writers of horror fiction, have an opportunity to share their most unsettling tales with one another. What ever could go terrifyingly wrong?

Whatever Ruben does next we’ll be right there, as Scare Me so satisfyingly displays, he does the genre a lot of ingenuity.

18. The Bloodhound

Unsettling and strange, the Bloodhound is a cerebral chamber horror film that riffs on Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” while slyly entertaining and provoking a patient audience in writer-director Patrick Picard’s ferocious feature debut.

Francis (Liam Aiken) visits his one time very close pal, Jean Paul Luret (Joe Adler) in his luxurious but forbidding mid-century home, after an alarming but aloof plea for help. What unfolds involves JP’s tormented twin sister Vivian (Annalise Basso), a crawling apparition, and more over the film’s scant but effectively utilized 72 minutes.

Picard composes many lovely and unnerving visuals compositions (cinematographer Jake Magee is also one to keep an eye on), with a highly effective production design from Arielle Ness-Cohn, suggesting that this eerie introduction is one full of promise and menace.

17. Alone

Horror is truly the director’s genre (which is to say true suspense horror like Hitchcock and De Palma, not tedious torture porn and simple jump scares), and for proof of that look no further than John Hyam’s latest, the excellent, upsetting and artful small scale survival thriller freakout, Alone.

With any luck this will be Hyam’s breakthrough film as he continues to show so much promise and poise in the director’s chair (check out 2012’s Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning should you doubt his directorial chops).

Alone is definitely bolstered by remarkable performances from leads Jules Wilcox and Marc Menchaca (you thought he was creepy in HBO’s The Outsider, well wait until you get a load of him here!) as Jessica (Wilcox), a recent widow dealing with grief amidst a small cross-country trek, is kidnapped by a cruel, cold-blooded killer (Menchaca) who won’t give up the chase.

As far as the cat-and-mouse game goes, all the players here make Alone an outstanding, even breathtaking, feat. Not at all for the squeamish, Alone is a rewarding but deeply troubling cut of bucolic terror.

16. Come True

Writer-director Anthony Scott Burns serves up some imaginative ghostly imagery, a weirdly effective washed-out look, and another in a string of strong performances from Julia Sarah Stone (The Unseen, Weirdos) to elevate this “sleep study from hell” supernatural sci-fi shocker, Come True.

Genre fans will no doubt detect shades of Brian De Palma’s the Fury, John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness and Wes Craven’s Elm Street films when Come True is working (which is most of the time), with citations to rehashed X-men films and lesser Elm Street slashers when it’s not (there are definitely some predictable situations and outcomes that don’t do anyone any favors). So yes, while many of the tropes here have been done many times before, there’s still more than a few fascinating new wrinkles to this psychic-teen-in-distress thriller and a satisfying finish that make it worth a solid recommendation and something of a genre standout for the year.

Sooner or later Stone will get the breakout role she deserves and that will certainly send fans back to this film where they will not be disappointed. You read it here first.

15. His House

Much has been made of director Remi Weekes’s feature length debut concerning a young refugee couple (Sope Dirisu, Wunmi Mosaku, both excellent) who’ve barely, and not unscathed, escaped the horrors of the war-ravaged South Sudan (their daughter perishes during the hard journey), for a new life in the UK.

What follows is a well executed and rather chilling haunted house thriller with a suiting socio-political commentary weaved into the narrative (the screenplay comes from Weekes, Felicity Evans and Toby Venables), making it as urgent and up-to-the-minute as it is tried-and-true for fans of sweeping, gothic horror.

Our only real issues here are with the small disappointments that such a smart horror film as this still relies so heavily on the trite and too predictable jump scare (this trend needs to die) when there’s more than enough eerie upsets and intrigue to overshadow such manipulative gimmickry.

Otherwise His House gets a strong recommendation and is one of the year’s more notable and effective genre films.

14. The Mortuary Collection

Writer-director Ryan Spindell’s latest creation, The Mortuary Collection, is that too rare a genre treat: a horror anthology that is consistently creepy, creative and most importantly for this kind of movie, it’s also a shit ton of fun.

In fact, in all these sordid little tales, framed around a young woman, Sam (Caitlin Custer) being interviewed for a position at a local mortician’s office that evolves into a series of scary stories being shared with pep and panic, there ain’t a stinker in the bunch. The tales, each displaying layered and lush production design, gruesome practical effects, and suitably ironic and ruthless narrative twists, are as memorable as they are macabre.

An extra fist-pump goes out for the scenery-chewin’ Clancy Brown, who easily gives the Cryptkeeper a run for his menacing monster-hosting money. For fright fans, The Mortuary Collection will easily stand shoulder-to-shoulder with similar omnibus terror tales like Creepshow (1982) and Trick ‘r Treat (2007), and like those genre mainstays, this one comes highly recommended. Satisfaction guaranteed!

13. Color Out of Space

If you want to see Nic Cage go full freak, Richard Stanley’s Color Out of Space delivers the goods. If you’re coming around the other side of things as an H.P. Lovecraft fan (for our money, his 1927 short story that inspired this film is the most terrifying thing he ever wrote) you won’t find this to be the most faithful of adaptations. But you will find that Stanley taps the weird fiction vein and cosmic terror nerve better than most who’ve approached Lovecraft’s work, and you probably won’t mind the liberties taken with the material.

Nathan (Cage) and Theresa Gardner (Joely Richardson) are a happily married couple in rural America with three kids and a farm where they raise alpacas and grow juicy tomatoes. Their ridiculously precious domestic bubble is about to burst most brutally when a glowing meteorite lands on their front lawn. Their bliss blooms to a kaleidoscopic nightmare in no time flat as space madness consumes the family in viciously personalized ways (even the alpacas aren’t spared the cosmic lash), and of course Cage goes Force 10 shitstorm.

It’s nice to see Stanley confidently calling action again after a lengthy absence (his output was famously stymied after the Island of Dr. Moreau fiasco in 1996, with his scant work since then being inconsistent and substandard), but given Cage’s Nic Cage-iness, one wonders if he took much direction at all. His reactions, or rather, his overreactions, never seem to match the matters at hand. But space mania will do that to you so here he gets a solid pass.

12. Zombi Child

Provocative French filmmaker Bertrand Bonello (Nocturama) resurrects the dead, or rather the undead, for this slow-burning but deeply rewarding exploration of colonialism, slavery, and voodoo mythology, with a little teen angst added for extra zip.

A much more literate horror film than most, Bonello, ever the iconoclast, here channels Jacques Tourner, weaving an intricate, naturalistic tale that also pays tribute to such diverse genre benchmarks as Victor Halperin’s White Zombie and Wes Craven’s The Serpent and the Rainbow.

Bouncing around from Haiti in 1962 to Paris in the present day, Zombi Child’s main thrust is with Melissa (Wislanda Louimat), a Haitian teenager at a prestigious all-girls boarding school who harbors a family secret that her new clique of friends are keen to unriddle.

Carefully combining an outsider perspective of awesome beauty and the corporeal existence of voodoo, Zombi Child not only permeates the present, but the past as well.

11. She Dies Tomorrow

Alternately jarring and subdued, writer-director Amy Seimetz (Sun Don’t Shine) weaves a nuanced tale of haunting, emotional anguish in her latest film, She Dies Tomorrow. To watch this movie today, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic — and particularly if you’ve ever read Ray Bradbury’s 1951 short story “The Last Night of the World”, which must have been at least a thematic influence — makes the dread and fatalist certainty of Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil) all the more palpable and distressing.

Like Rob Savage’s Host (which you’ll find further down this very list), Seimetz’s film is instantly identifiable as part of society’s present ambience of uncertainty, insanity and existential panic owing to civil and mental turmoil. Both horror films drive in different directions but share a rattling unrest

In Seimetz’s psychodrama a circle of friends quickly come to recognize that Amy’s odd surety that death is quickly approaching becomes something every bit as infectious as the novel coronavirus. The apprehension, anxiety and paranoia these characters stare down becomes a frighteningly believable contagion.

The 10 Darkest Noir Films of The Classic Era

Wed, 06 Jan 2021 03:02:52 GMT

Once the U.S. entered the Second World War, it become necessary for Hollywood to address certain aspects of grim reality which post-Depression era cinema had specialized in ignoring. After the war had ended, reality seemed to become even grimmer, and filmmakers responded by showing audiences a version of the world in which Hollywood’s conservative, romantic values were turned against themselves in the form of bleak, unremitting fatalism.

Many of these films, retrospectively identified by European critics as noir, were unsentimental tragedies, in which even the smallest errors of judgement can lead to earthly damnation. Much of the time, the world in these films, heavily swathed in shadow, is revealed by the end to be much brighter than it appears, but in more than a few cases, the stories are even darker than the shadows.

1. Ace in the Hole (1951)

Before Billy Wilder perfected the acerbic lightness of touch for which he is best remembered, he was one of several exiled European directors who gravitated towards noir. After great success with the influential, deadly romance of Double Indemnity (1945), and his Oscar-winning portrait of alcoholism in The Lost Weekend (1945), Wilder left the genre behind with Ace in the Hole (1951), his darkest film.

Kirk Douglas stars as Chuck Tatum, a reporter run out of New York by scandal, attempting to rebuild his career working for a local paper in New Mexico. Here, he stumbles upon an amateur archaeologist trapped in a cave and successfully turns the rescue operation into a national sensation, revealing the dark recesses of his own nature in the process. Ordinarily, Tatum’s serpent-like manipulation of the gentle cave-diver would be reason enough for his own, certain downfall, but with his physical and emotional violence towards the man’s wife (Jan Sterling), and calculated delaying of the rescue to increase publicity, with fatal results, Wilder strives to make him irredeemable.

The film is a shockingly blunt acknowledgement of failed expectations in post-war America, and proved too bitter for most audiences to swallow. Wilder’s later work would always take a more rueful approach, but never without some measure of this film’s undiluted cynicism.

2. Criss Cross (1949)

Director Robert Siodmak – another European emigre – flitted as easily between horror and musicals in Hollywood as between shadows and Technicolor, yet he directed a string of exemplary noirs, of which the sourest is probably Criss Cross (1949).

Burt Lancaster plays a luckless everyman, hopelessly in thrall to his femme fatale ex-girlfriend, Yvonne De Carlo. After tracking her down to Los Angeles, only to discover she has become a gangster’s moll, he masterminds a robbery of the firm where he works just to be near her. When the heist succeeds, he rips off the gang, only to be ripped off by De Carlo.

The pair’s actions are mindlessly compulsive from beginning to end, yet they never cease to leave each other unsurprised. This world-weary acquiescence to predictable, deadly outcomes makes them perhaps the ultimate noir couple. What truly marks the film out, however, is its finale. De Carlo’s gangster boyfriend hunts the criss-crossed lovers down and shoots them to death. After he departs, we hear the sound of police sirens and more gunfire. This small sound edit is all that prevents the antagonist from getting away with murder, making for an uncommonly downbeat ending.

3. The Face Behind the Mask (1941)

Hungarian star Peter Lorre fled from Nazi Germany to the U.S. in the mid-30s, and his diminutive, bulbous-eyed appearance quickly saw him typecast as mysterious, untrustworthy outsiders, variations of which he played in Stranger on the Third Floor (1940) and The Maltese Falcon (1941), the two films most often agreed to mark the origins of Hollywood noir. An outlier in this history is Robert Florey’s gangster melodrama The Face Behind the Mask (1941). Released between those two films, it is as much a riposte to their stereotyping of Lorre as it is an overlooked noir classic.

Lorre plays Janos, a friendly immigrant watchmaker who is disfigured in a blaze, mere hours after his arrival in New York. He then dons a sinister white mask and turns to organized crime, whilst courting the affections of the beautiful, blind Evelyn Keyes. When he attempts to retire from the criminal life, his gang tries to assassinate him, killing his new love in the process. The film ends with Janos stranding himself and the gang in the desert by plane, dooming them all.

Lorre reportedly viewed this B-picture as a routine assignment, and drank heavily during production. Despite this, he gives one of his best performances, and the film’s short, sharp excoriation of the American Dream makes it one of the most bleakly fatalistic of its kind.

4. I Wake Up Screaming (1941)

This pulpy murder mystery stars Victor Mature as a wisecracking publicist, falsely accused of killing his most recent discovery, waitress-turned-singer Vicki (Carole Landis). Together with Vicki’s sister (Betty Grable) he searches for the real killer whilst being hounded by a seemingly deranged police detective (Laird Cregar).

On the surface, I Wake Up Screaming (1941) is a comedy-thriller, but as the title would imply to most modern viewers, its plot is closer to a horror. The various twists include revealing the murderer to be a creepy desk clerk at Vicki’s apartment building (noir heavyweight Elisha Cook Jr.), whilst the detective is finally revealed to have been Vicki’s stalker, complete with a secret room covered in photographs.

This portrayal of voyeurism, unusually barefaced for Classical Hollywood, prefigures similar Hitchcock thrillers, whilst the strong element of comic relief, and a soundtrack relying heavily on instrumental versions of ‘Over the Rainbow’, makes for a disturbingly flippant tone, further heightening its atmosphere of perversity, making it something of a stylistic forerunner to European giallo thrillers.

5. Ladies in Retirement (1941)

Although a Gothic melodrama rather than a true noir, Ladies in Retirement (1941) is more than worthy of the genre. Ida Lupino plays Ellen, spinster companion to retired actress Miss Fiske (Isobel Elsom) in her secluded country home. After Ellen’s two, mentally-ill sisters arrive for an indefinite stay, their antics upset Miss Fiske to the point she asks Ellen to get rid of them, forcing Ellen to get rid of her.

In noir cinema, murder is often treated as mundane, an act of violence begetting further acts in swift succession. For much of the film, Ellen is shown to agonize over her eventual, inevitable decision to commit just one, making her consequent guilt and paranoia almost mild by comparison (the 22-year old Lupino is extraordinary in the role). Not until the final minutes is her crime uncovered by a raffish cousin (Louis Hayward), whose shock masks his own, lengthy period of denial as to Fiske’s whereabouts. Once found out, Ellen willingly gives herself up, leaving her dependent sisters to an uncertain future.

The film’s genteel, period veneer and claustrophobia allowed director Charles Vidor to explore some of the genre’s darkest themes more probingly than many of its tougher contemporaries, whilst Lupino herself would shortly go on to become one of noir’s great directors.

The 10 Best New Year Movies

Tue, 29 Dec 2020 15:19:15 GMT

Let’s all say it proudly: 2020 sucked! 2020 was booty, from the coronavirus death toll to no hyped movies being released. Everyone’s ready for a new year and a fresh start, but will 2021 be any better? Probably not. Years aren’t good or bad, life doesn’t get better depending on the year- people get better, and people can decide whether they view life as good or bad. Like Marucs Aurelius said, “Everything can be taken from man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Yeah, all of us have been probably waded through some pretty terrible murk this year, but our attitudes will decide everything in 2021. 2020, although a year of tremendous tragedy, has been a great year to filter that murk out of our systems to better ourselves. Recharge your batteries and ready your new attitude and resolutions by watching these great flicks that embody the New Year spirit. Thank you to the few trolls that have stuck around on this site. We truly couldn’t exist without you, and we love and appreciate each one of you with every inch of our hearts- you complete and improve us. Maybe sometimes we do write terrible reviews- but none of that matters; the past is the past. The real Taste of Cinema is the friends we made along the way. Happy New Year, and TOC wishes all the best!

10. Four Rooms (1995)

On New Year’s Eve, in the Hollywood Hotel Mon Signor, first time Bellboy Ted (Tim Roth) experiences crazy occurrences with insane guests. A dark anti-comedy anthology with 4 segments directed by 90s indie darling directors Alison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell, Quentin Tarantino, and Robert Rodriguez, “Four Rooms” was made in the vein of Roald Dahl’s adult stories.

Tim Roth’s over the top performance channelling Jerry Lewis really busts a gut, his comedic timing shining in strange situations involving witches, mistaken identities, baby sitting, and movie industry runoff. You might have to have an acquired taste to enjoy this flick, but there’s this one thing everyone can agree on- the turkey club featured in this film is the best movie sandwich in cinema history.

9. The New Year (2010)

A slow moving indie directed by Brett Haley, “The New Year” concerns former high school valedictorian Sunny (Trieste Kelly Dunn), who drops out of community college to tend to her father after he’s diagnosed with terminal cancer. She’s dating Neal (Kevin Wheatley), a pudgy, insecure, karate dude, but rekindles her relationship with stand up comedian Issac (Ryan Hunter), an old high school frenemy. As the narrative goes on, we learn that life is very disappointing as the film meditates on the fear of transition, our protagonist ultimately facing this fear as a new year approaches.

If you’re a depressed college student dealing with life problems and uncertainty, this is your type of movie! Thanks to the leading lady Trieste Kelly Dunn’s amazing, naturalistic, breakout performance as Sunny, “The New Year” feels like an authentic slice of real life. Brett Haley also grows as a director during the film’s duration. Overall, this movie is a must watch- “The New Year” is top tier!

8. About Time (2013)

After a disappointing New Year party, aspiring lawyer Tim Lake (Domhall Gleason) discovers a family secret- the Lake men can travel through time. They can’t change history, but can change portions of their own lives, so Tim uses his newfound abilities to get a girlfriend. He meets quirky American girl Mary (Rachel McAdams), and with his powers cunningly tweaks time and space so the two can have a smooth, perfect relationship. The meat of the conflict starts when Tim realizes time travel can’t solve all the ordinary problems of a fantastical life.

A mashup of “Groundhog Day” and “Love Actually,” rom-com maestro Richard Curtis’s “About Time” isn’t a movie that slaps- it’s a magnum opus that warms you up on a cold Monday morning.

7. Trading Places (1983)

A 21st Century Prince and the Pauper, “Trading Places” tells the story of a preppy white snob Louis Winthorpe III (Dan Akroyd), and street smart con artist Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy), who trade places due to a bet made by two millionaires. After Winthrope falsely accuses Valentine of theft, the millionaires step in to reverse the situation, one betting that Valentine could do better business than the preppy white boy. The comedy is let loose when Winthrope’s life falls apart for Valentine to inherit. The film climaxes at a train set New Year’s party that involves a business commodities scam, as well as some other nice surprises that won’t be spoiled here.

A clever social commentary on racial prejudice in America, “Trading Places” is hilarious from beginning to end, with strong performances from foils Eddie Murphy and Dan Akroyd.

6. Phantom Thread (2017)

Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day Lewis) is a famous and meticulous dressmaker who falls in love with muses, then after tiring of them, casts them aside. His latest: the elusive Alma (Vicky Krieps), a hotel waiter, and Alma has a lot of bite, not embodying the idealized feminine figure Reynolds desires of her. This unequal power balance causes an intense battle of the sexes in Paul Thomas Anderson’s fresh take on the “older artist meets young muse” trope. We dive deep into Woodcock’s strange madness, and it seems beneath all the glamor he’s just a little boy crying for mommy.

Daniel Day Lewis, of course, is brilliant as Reynolds Woodcock, playing a mad, vampiric artist, and Vicky Krieps is masterful in playing a muse cunning in her love. The film’s best scene takes place at a New Year party’s denouement where the twisted couple dances, isolated in a concert hall.

10 Great Picaresque Movies To Stumble Across The World With

Tue, 29 Dec 2020 15:18:50 GMT

The picaro from the Spanish for ‘rogue’ or ‘rascal’ describes an archetype of hero found in literary classics like Cervantes’ Don Quixote and Voltaire’s Candide and fulfilled in the filmic mainstream by characters like Tom Hanks’ Forrest Gump, that certain brand of travelling everyman to which the world always seems to happen to, and who in good luck and bad always roll with the punches. This is the picaresque, the story of the picaro’s zigzagged flight through the tangled web of fate or their wild ride on fortune’s wheel where the movements of a life are sped along and all seem to turn on happenstance.

The picaro is foremost a kind of emptiness, an innocent, an opportunist, or a jack of trades, in which there is a flexibility and passive kind of self-interest which makes them a sieve through which all the circumstance of the outside world can pass. There is in this kind of constant adaption a free passage for the picaro across the near and far, high and low, a collapse of sociopolitical lines that keep the rest of the world stratified and subdivided, stuck among their own. And it’s in the picaro’s impartial passage that they as a sounding board reveal the follies of their world in the stops along the way.

So here are 10 picaresques to stumble across the world with.

1. Fellini Satyricon (1969)

By 1969 Fellini had already set a standard for the filmic picaresque with iconic films La Strada (1954), Nights of Cabiria (1957), and La Dolce Vita (1960), but to start with just one of the maestro’s works let’s look at Fellini Satyricon, a “free adaptation” of The Satyricon of Gaius Petronius, the ancient Roman prototype of the entire genre.

Fellini Satyricon follows the comic efforts of vagrants Encolpius (Martin Poetter) and Ascyltus (Hiram Keller) – best friends and enemies – to cheat and steal their way to getting their fill of food, drink, sex, et al. while fighting over possession of their favorite sex slave Giton (Max Born) and try to find a cure for Encolpius’ impotence which has fallen on him like a curse from the god Priapus.

Told with his typical carnivalesque Fellini takes the duo from scene to scene of gross indulgence and debauchery through the high and low (though always vulgar) of Nero’s Rome, from the subterranean apartments of the underclass to the pompous museum where they meet failed poet Eumolpus (Salvo Randone), the resplendent manor ex-slave turned Gatsby figure Trimalchio, (Mario Romagnioli) and the the slave galley of Lichas (Alain Cuny) by which the pair are captured and sold to the highest bidder before ending up in the gladiatorial games, chased, unarmed by the minotaur.

Encolpius and Ascyltus get by on their wits, their ability to adapt and disappear into any social station, seize upon any opportunity that presents itself, and pledge loyalty to nothing and nobody outside their own desires, least of all one another.

2. Modern Times (1936)

Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp is not always the picaro, and regularly to the contrary fills one or another role for which he’s ill prepared and is driven by some strong moral purpose. But for his down and out desperation, drifting from job to job in Modern Times Chaplin creates a comic-humanist picaro for the great depression that says one in times of poverty can afford to be nothing else.

Chaplin’s Tramp begins the film working on an Electro Steel Corp assembly line, overworked into an automaton that can’t shut off its bolt-fastening even when he steps off the line. Meanwhile the factory hierarchy is cross sectioned to show the boss (Al Ernest Garcia), a man absorbed in reading Tarzan – the fetishization of the very old world his factories work to erase. After being accidentally sucked into a machine at the far end of the assembly line, the Tramp has a total breakdown (or in the name of protest fakes one, we never are so sure how conscious the Tramp is of the chaos he creates) and runs amok the factory throwing switches here and there sabotaging production and fastening anything bolt shaped where he sees it, the large buttons on his coworkers’ overalls and the rear end of a woman passing in the street.

Alongside an orphan girl “the gamin” (Paulette Goddard) the Tramp finds his way into all sorts of trouble, from the hospital to the head of a communist protest rounding the corner at the wrong place and wrong time, to prison for his agitating where he accidentally ingests a salt shaker of cocaine and stops a jailbreak in the ensuing mania, working a night shift at the department store where he lives large in the furniture department, and short disastrous stints as a shipmaker, a mill worker, a waiter and a club singer, each which end of course in some good natured disaster.

3. After Hours (1985)

After Hours is a picaresque like a nightmare screwball comedy that follows New York office drone Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) breaking free of the boredom and routine of his middle management existence when he meets Marcy (Rosanna Arquette) in a coffee shop one night and after exchanging numbers makes plans to meet up on the pretext of buying a ‘plaster of paris bagel and cream cheese paperweight’ from her artist roommate Kiki (Linda Fiorentino).

But Paul’s night is marred by bad omen and thwarted all the way by seemingly chance accidents that add up to something like a vengeful God or a conspiracy against him that sends Paul running for home. Along the way he meets a properly bizarre procession of SoHo strangers, from punks and S&M freaks to a woman stuck in the swinging sixties (Teri Garr), a bloodthirsty Mr. Softie Ice-Cream truck driver (Catherine O’Hara), Cheech & Chong as bumbling burglars, and a venue doorman straight out of Franz Kafka (his dialogue taken verbatim from “Before The Law”).

The film builds on themes of guilt and sin that show Paul as both the victim of wild circumstance and somehow deserving of his fate as encounter after encounter he slights those willing to help and leaves a growing trail of incrimination.

4. O Lucky Man (1973)

Lindsay Anderson’s 1973 O Lucky Man! continues the adventures of Malcolm McDowell’s Mick Travis, who last appeared in Anderson’s 1968 If… as a radical student turned terrorist, now inconspicuously reformed as a bright eyed society man looking to make himself a career as salesperson for the English Imperial Coffee Company overtaking the Northeast sales sector from a Colonel Kurtzish coffee man who mysteriously abandoned his post.

The film, punctuated by performances of rock pianist Alan Price uses its musical sequences to comment upon the action with satirical songs like “Lucky Man”, “Poor People”, and “Sell Sell” that extol the virtues of ruthlessness with a smile which propel Travis to success.

Travis finds himself not working long at the coffee company before being captured by the military under suspicion of being a communist spy, escaping into a job as medical test subject of the mad Dr. Millar (who is combining human and dinosaur genes and putting human heads on sheep bodies), hitchhiking with Alan Price’s band where he meets the hippie Patricia (Helen Mirren) whose anti-materialist ideals are bolstered on her mogul father Mr. Burgess’ (Ralph Richardson) vast business empire which Travis then finds himself working for selling chemical weapons to a foreign dictator (Arthur Lower) before ending up in prison and reformed into ideals of universal brotherhood and charity which are quickly trampled on by those they seek to help.

5. Midnight Cowboy (1969)

Midnight Cowboy, the 1969 film from John Schlesinger follows wannabe hustler Joe Buck (John Voight) through a tumultuous winter after leaving small town Texas in a new cowboy hat and boots to make it big in New York City.

Only things aren’t so easy as the naive Joe Buck assumes and he quickly finds himself struggling, failing to get money from his clients who mistake his inept advances as simple pickups or take advantage of his good nature to stiff him, and ends up on the street after losing his last dollar and having the hotel foreclose on his stuff. Here he meets Dustin Hoffman’s petty conman Ratso (I’m walkin’ here!!) Rizzo, who presents himself to Buck as an experienced “manager” meaning to take Buck under his wing but ending up sick and dependent on him.

The two make ends barely meet as scavengers, living in a condemned building and stealing the bare necessities. Luck comes and goes in small doses until one night Buck is found by a pair of artists Hansel (Paul Rossilli) and Gret (Warhol superstar Viva) who seem to take his naive cowboy ways as some kind of hipster pose, and is invited to a party where he meets Shirley (Brenda Vaccaro), his first real customer and introduction to a proper clientele, which as things go does not end up lasting.