Archive for July, 2009
Esther, Anna, Johan: Objects in space
Two women, Esther (Ingrid Thulin) and Anna (Gunnel Lindblom), travel by train to a hotel in an unnamed foreign city along with Anna’s young son, Johan (Jörgen Lindström). Esther is dying and is left in the hotel room while Anna goes out to have sex with a waiter and Johan explores the hotel.
Like the two preceding films in Bergman’s “trilogy of faith” — Through a Glass Darkly and Winter Light — The Silence is a series of failed communications, and continues the exploration of the search for meaning in a world where God is silent. So silent is he in this film that he is barely mentioned. A church is mentioned in passing as a cool place where Anna had sex with the waiter; the church in The Silence is a wholly corporeal place, devoid of grace, offering only bodily comfort. And like in Winter Light, the spectre of war hangs over The Silence: outside the train on their way to the city, they see lines and lines of tanks outside the window. [...]
Tags: 1960s, Drama, Gunnel Lindblom, Ingmar Bergman, Ingrid Thulin, Jörgen Lindström, The Silence, Trilogy of Faith
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Thomas (Gunnar Björnstrand) and Märta (Ingrid Thulin).
A widowed priest, Thomas (Gunnar Björnstrand), has lost his faith in God. After a sermon, a fisherman, Jonas (Max von Sydow), comes to see him, troubled by his own lack of faith and anxious about the state of the world — he saw a news story saying the Chinese are brought up to hate us, and that they’ll soon have the bomb. Thomas speaks to Jonas and thinks he was able to help, but Jonas shoots himself soon after their conversation. Meanwhile, the local schoolteacher, Märta (Ingrid Thulin), is in love with Thomas, who either is unable to love her back or is at least unable to admit to himself that he loves her. [...]
Tags: 1960s, Drama, Gunnar Björnstrand, Ingmar Bergman, Ingrid Thulin, Max von Sydow, Trilogy of Faith, Winter Light
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Karin (Harriet Andersson) finds God.
A second-rate author, David (Gunnar Björnstrand), his son and daughter, Minus (Lars Passgård) and Karin (Harriet Andersson), and the daughter’s husband, Martin (Max von Sydow), are staying on an island. Karin is a latent schizophrenic who has just gotten back from hospital, while David has just returned from Switzerland, where he fled to write when Karin fell ill. On the island, Karin’s condition worsens; she wakes in the night and goes up to the attic, where she hears voices talking from behind the frayed wallpaper. They tell her to read her father’s diary, where she learns that her condition is incurable and that her father is disgusted to find himself studying her as a subject for his writing. Meanwhile, Minus tries and fails to connect with his father, and Martin grows ever more desperate at his inability to help Karin. [...]
Tags: 1960s, Drama, Gunnar Björnstrand, Harriet Andersson, Ingmar Bergman, Lars Passgård, Max von Sydow, Through a Glass Darkly, Trilogy of Faith
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The comedy stylings of Lewis and Morse.
Series 1
The Dead of Jericho (6 January 1987)
Written by Anthony Minghella (based on Colin Dexter’s novel). Directed by Alastair Reid.
Morse (John Thaw) meets a woman, Ann Staveley (Gemma Jones), in his choir. When she’s found dead of an apparent suicide, Morse suspects murder and, with the help of Sergeant Lewis (Kevin Whately), sets out to prove it.
Like most Morses, the plot in this début tends toward meandering a bit and, really, that’s the way it should be. Thaw is fantastic, as usual, and Minghella’s script captures the melancholy of Dexter’s novels well. Reid’s directing does the job just fine, though the 16mm grain does grate a bit. It’s amazing they got their eye in so quick. [...]
Tags: 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, Amanda Hillwood, Crime, Inspector Morse, ITV, John Thaw, Kevin Whately, Mystery, Procedural
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Cinema is the ultimate pervert art; it doesn’t give you what you desire, it tells you how to desire.
You know, I don't remember Melanie having a beard.
In the wonderfully titled Pervert’s Guide to Cinema Slovenian sociologist, psychologist, and philosopher Slavoj Žižek looks at cinema, represented by a great number of disparate films, through Lacanian psychoanalysis. Divided in three parts, the film uses a kind of stream-of-consciousness structure, flowing from one subject to the next seemingly on Žižek’s whim. Director Fiennes uses the clever conceit of having Žižek appear on the locations or replicas of sets of the films he discusses — when he discusses The Birds he’s in Bodega Bay, when he discusses Psycho he’s in Norman Bates’s cellar, et c. — furthering Žižek idea that cinema at its purest is concerned with elevating reality to the realm of the magical; Žižek makes himself into a character in the films he’s discussing, fictionalising himself. As Žižek says, the choice between the blue pill and the red pill, between fiction and reality, is a false dilemma — fiction is reality. [...]
Tags: 2000s, Film Theory, Jacques Lacan, Psychoanalysis, Psychology, Slavoj Žižek, Sophie Fiennes
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Harriet (Sally Faulkner) learns that everyone is a critic. Even lesbian vampires.
Before proceeding, I want to warn you that this review contains spoilers for the ending. But this is the internet and you’re probably here to be spoiled, so:
Vampyres opens on a day-for-night shot of a Victorian Gothic country house, then zooms in on a window. Inside the house, we find two naked women in bed together. A man climbs the stairs outside their room, enters, and shoots them to death. You have to admire the efficiency of that opening; it tells us right away what kind of film we’re watching: Zoom and day-for-night? OK, it’s a 1970s British horror film. Naked lesbians? Ah! It’s a 1970s lesbian horror film. [...]
Tags: 1970s, Anulka Dziubinska, Brian Deacon, D. Daubeney, Harry Waxman, José Ramón Larraz, Lesbian Horror, LGBT, Marianne Morris, Michael Byrne, Sally Faulkner, Thomas Owen, Vampire, Vampyres
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Madeleine (Christina Lindberg) knows the importance of colour coordinating your eye patch.
Madeleine (Christina Lindberg) is mute since being raped as a child. One day, she leaves the family farm and follows a man who seemingly can’t stop talking to the city. As you might’ve guessed, it doesn’t end well. The man, Tony (Heinz Hopf), is a pimp who forces Madeleine into prostitution and heroin addiction. After at first refusing, Madeleine soon has her mind changed by a scalpel to the eye. Despite the steady heroin supply, Madeleine doesn’t very much like prostitution, and sets out to get her revenge on Tony and the tricks. [...]
Tags: 1970s, Action, Bo Arne Vibenius, Christina Lindberg, Exploitation, Heinz Hopf, Heroin, LGBT, Prostitution, Rape, Revenge, Vengeance
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Silhouette celebrates Japan's surrender the old fashioned way.
Zack Snyder’s feature film debut, Dawn of the Dead (2004), had a kinetic, visually exciting opening sequence, but the rest of the film was fairly pointless. His second film, 300, was all flash and no substance, and, frankly, I found it a bit boring. And now, he’s tasked with bringing the Tristram Shandy of comic books, Alan Moore’s Watchmen (1986-7), to the silver screen. So, a comic book by a wizard, adapted by Solid Snake, and directed by a man who made his name with a zombie film remake. If that isn’t the definition of the post-modern condition, I don’t know what is; the creators are mash-up of pop-culture mythology. [...]
Tags: 2000s, Action, Alan Moore, Alex Tse, Comic Book, Dave Gibbons, David Hayter, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Super Hero, Watchmen, Zack Snyder
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“At the same time, the chasm between what you are to others and what you are to yourself — the feeling of vertigo and the constant desire to finally be exposed, to be seen through, cut down, perhaps even annihilated.”
A projector lamp. Film running through spools. A penis. A nail driven through a hand. A spider. Footage from a silent film. Bodies in the morgue. A boy watches Bibi Anderson’s and Liv Ullman’s faces on a screen. No, that isn’t an excerpt from a Coleman Francis film’s narration, but a list of some of the images which open Ingmar Bergman’s Persona. [...]
Tags: 1960s, Bibi Andersson, Drama, Hyper-Real, Identity, Ingmar Bergman, Liv Ullman, Margareta Krook, Persona, Surreal, Sven Nykvist
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Die Hard (1988)
John McClane (Bruce Willis) is at an office Christmas party when the building is taken over by terrorist. One of the best action films of all time. Bruce Willis is superb as the prototypical American hero, and Alan Rickman hams it up as the “terrorist” leader. It’s the film that pretty much created the modern action film, and it’s sure a fun ride.
Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990)
Or:
Die Hard in an airport. Follows the
Aliens dictum for sequels: if you can’t make it better, make it louder. And it’s certainly action-packed, but it’s let down by the ludicrous plot and the sometimes headache-inducing editing. Still, it’s fun to watch Bruce Willis reenact the American Monomyth again, and Harlin does know how to shoot an explosion.
Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995)
This time, Willis gets some help from Samuel L. Jackson as they play a deadly game of Simon Says all over New York City. Even dumber than
Die Harder, but the action set-pieces are still fun to watch and the Willis/Jackson dynamic is all right once they get past the initial idiocy and settle into the film.
Life Free or Die Hard (2007)
As is customary for Die Hard sequels,
Live Free or Die Hard (worst title yet, and the rest-of-the-world version,
Die Hard 4.0, isn’t much better) is dumb but fun. It’s basically a series of effects sequences strung together by something that is almost but not entirely unlike an intelligent plot.
Tags: 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, Action, Alan Rickman, Bruce Willis, David Marconi, Die Hard, Doug Richardson, Jeb Stuart, John McTiernan, Jonathan Hensleigh, Len Wiseman, Mark Bomback, Renny Harlin, Roderick Thorp, Samuel L. Jackson, Steven E. de Souza, Walter Wager
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