Archive for the ‘Film’ Category
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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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.
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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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Chevy Chase proves, once again, that cocaine is a hell of a drug.
Fletch (Chevy Chase) is an undercover reporter, trying to expose drug ring at the beach. One day, Fletch is approached by Alan Stanwyk (Tim Matheson) who claims to be dying of cancer and wants Fletch to kill him. Fletch, immediately suspicious and sensing an opportunity to put on a great many disguises and make a great many snarky comments, turns his muck-raking eye on Stanwyk and starts to unravel the tangled connections between the drug ring and Stanwyk. [...]
Tags: 1980s, Andrew Bergman, Chevy Chase, Comedy, Fletch, Gregory McDonald, Michael Ritchie, Neo-Noir, Tim Matheson
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I'm not only a writer, I'm also a spokesperson for the NRA.
In 1974, Meir Zarchi and his eight-year-old daughter were driving to a park when they saw a woman crawl naked out of the bushes. The woman had been raped by two men and Zarchi helped her to the police, where they had the misfortune of running into a singularly unhelpful police officer. It was this episode that inspired Zarchi to write and direct Day of the Woman. While the very fact that Zarchi chose to make a B-movie about rape is exploitative, in its first release, Day of the Woman wasn’t marketed as exploitation and didn’t create much controversy, but went mostly unnoticed. However, the film was re-released in 1980 as I Spit on Your Grave and sold on its, not insubstantial, exploitation trappings. [...]
Tags: 1970s, Anthony Nichols, Camille Keaton, Day of the Woman, Drama, Eron Tabor, Exploitation, Gunter Kleemann, I Spit on Your Grave, Meir Zarchi, Rape, Revenge, Richard Pace, Thriller, Vengeance
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This is a story that happened yesterday. But I know it’s tomorrow.
Nikki Grace (Laura Dern) relaxes at home.
Shot on the cheap on digital video, Inland Empire was filmed without a complete script, and Lynch instead mostly made it up as they went along. Amazingly, this somehow works — fragmented, but still with a general, thematic cohesion. It stars Laura Dern as Nikki Grace, an actress who has just gotten the role of her life. The film they’re shooting, On High In Blue Tomorrows, starts bleeding into reality, and the nature of reality and fiction become even more confused when it turns out the On High is a remake of an old Polish play, 47, rumoured to be cursed. [...]
Tags: 2000s, David Lynch, Drama, Hyper-Real, Identity, Inland Empire, Laura Dern, Surreal, Thriller
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