"Accomplishments"
In theaters: In a film where Martin Scorsese collaborates once more with Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, it's Lily Gladstone who steals the show in Killers of the Flower Moon, or would, had her character not been sidelined for part of the film (out of historical necessity, but still). But then, this is a Native American story - the Osage County murders in the early 20th Century - as told through the prism of the white men who perpetrated the crimes, despite early voice-over by Gladstone. Co-opted is a word I might have used. Theme, as the scheme is about stealing Native land through marriage and inheritance? Or further injustice? It seems some film makers can do no wrong and Scorsese is one of these. He can do anything, so we let him do anything. I'm not as generous. The man is currently making TV mini-series bundled as feature films and no one dares tell him no. It's a problem. Not that he doesn't find a way to make every scene interesting, and I can't say I felt the 3½-hour run time. But I can still objectively say Killers didn't need to be this long. The meat of the film is DiCaprio arriving in town, falling in love, getting involved in these crimes, fine. Then it shows us the investigation in these same crimes, and the trial surrounding these crimes, with much repetition. Normally, we'd start seeing montages here, with people being hauled away and of course you know they've spilled the beans and so on. Scorsese could have jumped to the end at least a half-hour earlier if not more. His answer to the usual closing cards (the "what happened next" bit) is clever, but is distracting, as it doesn't match the naturalistic style of the rest of the movie. The opening V.O. was also a stylistic touch that doesn't carry over, forgotten over the bloated length of the movie. There's a good film in Killers of the Flower Moon, even if it's one Scorsese has made before give or take the setting, but indulgence takes over after it ends and we get two more versions of that film tacked on as epilogue. He's lost the ability to kill his darlings.
At home: Korea's 2023 Ballerina is not the 2024 John Wick spin-off Ballerina, but I am (will be) there for BOTH! The action in Lee Chung-hyun's is as furious as any Wick flick, but a little grittier. The camera often gets slammed and the violence is more visceral. As for the world, it's closer to Atomic Blonde with its acidic colors and neon glows, but just as stylized. As for the story, Jun Jong-seo (from Burning, and director Lee's The Call) is a personal bodyguard who goes after the human trafficking a-hole responsible for her girl friend's death, attracting a lot of attention from gangsters after an initial failure. It's a pretty simple revenge story, one that succeeds largely on style, but leaves some things on the table as far as I'm concerned - elements introduced that work as images and moments, but don't exactly pay off. Still, great stylized action and environments, and a cool heroine who puts herself in jeopardy to achieve her ends and stick it to some truly repugnant bad guys. I'm more than satisfied.
Regina Hall is Lisa, the manager of a Hooters-type sports bar, in Support the Girls, a simple drama by Andrew Bujalski (Computer Chess) that humanizes women whose sexualized job routinely renders them as objects. Lisa has a heart of gold and would do anything to help her girls out, even if it means she's always teetering on the edge of getting fired by the scumbag owner. There's a right way to do things and a wrong way, and she runs the place like she owns it, because that's the right way, and that's going to cause some friction. And so she navigates various employees' problems and transgressions, trying to find the most ethical solution, even as she swallows her own troubles for the good of the whole as things finally come to a head. The film creates a nice cast of characters who you would have wanted to watch week-in, week-out on a television series, with strong but understated dramatic moments and a streak of comedy. Hall is great, as usual.
Andrew Bujalski's first movie, Funny Ha Ha, is also credited as originating the Mumblecore movement and that's worth both bonus points and penalties, I suppose. Like a lot of the films in the genre that followed, I'm not sure how to really parse the hyper-naturalism. Is this really how real conversations sound? Perhaps it's my decades in improv, but I can't help but see drama students trying to improvise scenes as opposed to the actual people they're meant to play. Certain tics are obvious to me. They react with surprise and delaying tactics ("Oh really?" "Uhm, WHAT?!") when they're thinking of their next line, in a way I do NOT find natural. Actual improvisers would produce something more polished and theatrical, which wouldn't be natural either, but might at least be entertaining. Fine, let's watch people live in a near-documentary world, but could they be more interesting? (Bujalski's later films would hit a better balance between real-seeming people and scripted material.) I'm fairly invested in Kate Dollenmayer's Marnie, but all the boys she's interested in or that are interested in her (including Bujalski himself) are really lame and don't deserve her. Of interest is how she rebuffs the guy who moons over her just as she's rebuffed by the guy she likes (I don't know which is the absolute worst, but the other one is runner-up). The very last moment is so recursive, it speaks to the film's plotlessness, but it's also the most realistic and relatable. Some people, you never really get out of your system.
Remember when 38 was considered old? All of Me feels dated from word Go when Steve Martin's jobbing lawyer hits his mid-life crisis at that age, but there's an overall old-fashionedness to Carl Reiner's last movie with Martin that seems on purpose, so we might let it go - a silly supernatural premise, Lily Tomlin's sheltered character having no guile at all, the giant mansions, the quick switch between genres... Yep, it's like one of those 1930s fantasy romances. And if it HAD been made way back then, it would have been better received, I think. Set in the greedy 80s, there's something a little off-putting about the notion of the super-rich prolonging their lives by sticking their souls into willing poor servants, no matter how much we may like Tomlin. At least Martin remarks upon it. He's in a good form, selling a certain grounded melancholy and frustration, while also managing good physical comedy and slapstick, especially in the front-end farce. In the end, All of Me is about people feeling incomplete and making each other whole, two literal soul-mates unhappy with their choices or lot in life and getting to call a Mulligan. It's... cute.
Evolvo Lad: The Movie. That's a very niche joke, but it's what came to mind revisiting Ken Russell's Altered States, a film with nonsense gonzo pseudo-science that nevertheless could have inspired later efforts like Flatliners, Poltergeist, and Star Trek Voyager's Threshold (the one with the iguanas). I'm not sure that's something to be proud of, but there you go. William Hurt is a scientist trying to regress himself to the primordial human using everything from hallucinogens to sensory deprivation when a certain cocktail of these starts to provoke physical transformations. At that point, the sci-fi goes off the rails and into New Age mumbo jumbo, but retains its fascination thanks to trippy cosmic sequences and weirdo effects, some of which are indelible (the bit where Hurt is punching the wall and changing his reality, for example, has stayed with me since my first watch 30 years ago). Less successful because it feels rather undercooked is Hurt's personal evolution in the film as it relates to his marriage. Oh, is that what it was really about? I'm not sure I can be sold on that. I don't know if Altered States is anything like taking LSD, but it's a fair alternative for us straight arrows.
On a definite "what's going on here?!" slow burn, Claire Denis' Trouble Every Day explores sex addiction by presenting people (including super-creep Vincent Gallo) who, in the throes of passion, start eating their partners. Gives new meaning to the phrase "you look good enough to eat". And perhaps not eating so much as biting and ultimately, killing. Vampires or cannibals, but no feeding, except in the way a need is satisfied. Gallo is on the worst honeymoon on record (even for a horror film, unless it's normal for one to lock themselves in the bathroom to imagine your loved one rolling around in blood), in deep fear of going to far with his bride (an image of shame over kink?) and looking for a cure. In the end, perhaps only giving in to the addiction can restore some semblance of order. The last rather bleak moment gives us the impression the addict's partner has to live with it. Though Denis withholds the gory horror moments to two key devourings, she lathers on the psycho-sexual mood of horror films. People are always getting undressed and the camera traces body parts until you don't know what's what. It's all erogenous, or else it's all meat. An interesting discussion piece with some disturbing images and concepts at play, but I'd be in no hurry to span time with it again.
An absolutely cracking opener and stellar practical gore effects, but Romero's Day of the Dead is mostly concerned with scientists and military personnel shouting at each other as the zombie apocalypse of the first two films extends to the point of no return for humanity. I appreciate the film exploring its own lore, and the subplot about the "trained" zombie Bub (created by a scientist called Logan - SOMEone was a fan of Wolverine's!) pays off pretty well, but for the most part, it lacked what we go to these movies for. The guy in charge has cracked so his actions (and acting) are way over the top, which makes him so one-dimensional, it hurts. Either that or he's the most quotable character in the movie. Taken as camp, it might work as a hang-out movie, but there's too much down time between zombie attacks for that. So a case of diminishing returns, I'm afraid, with Night and Dawn the superior instalments.
As the era started putting out neo-Noirs, in 1990, James Bond III dared make neo-Blaxploitation by way of horror with Def by Temptation, about a demonic succubus who takes her lovers' souls in a rash of deadly one-night stands, but then sets her sights on an innocent would-be preacher (Bond himself) where she must play a longer game. Out to help the boyish seminary student are his old friend, now a movie star, and an X-Files case worker. It's a fairly cheap movie, but it has a lot of horror gags up its sleeve and the demon uses many different tricks, so Def isn't as repetitive as the plot would make it seem. And beyond the horror story, the film is interested in the bar scene as meat market, as we hear a lot of pick-up lines throughout that don't connect to the succubus directly. Faith and morality versus loose morals, with the latter resulting in a destruction of the soul. Good vibe for a horror film, which also has its share of camp. It's got funny lines and moments too. Pre-stardom Samuel Jackson has a small role in it, and so does the bed from The Room.
Mimi Rogers is a cubicle drone by day and a sexy swinger by night in The Rapture, but not for long once she starts questioning her life and becomes a believer as the Book of Revelations' Apocalypse seems to point its head. Christianity, when it becomes obsessed with the Rapture, is a death cult. Played as straight drama, the fact that the film can be found in the horror section means you're waiting for a veritable doomsday scenario, but the signs are so hallucinatory, whether the insanity of the final reel is actually happening or not is up to the audience member's sense of literalism and essential belief in these things. The psychological horror of the situation is created by dread of the coming event, but simultaneously, of the prospect it might not come at all. This isn't your standard horror film - it takes place over years and it's vibe is more existential and probing - but your usual drama doesn't dare as much as The Rapture does either.
Abel Ferrara uses horror tropes to create a thinly veiled study of drug(etc.) dependency in The Addiction, with vampires in place of addicts. Blood as drugs, of course, but sex and violence are also a part of the mix, with the vamps' approaches very sexual, and the protagonist (Lili Taylor) entranced by genocides in Vietnam and Nazi Germany. In other words, is humanity addicted to killing in the same way individuals are addicted to sex and substances? It's a heady brew only made headier by making Taylor a postgraduate philosophy student who talks like she's reciting her thesis. I won't pretend to be up on my philosophers enough to understand half of what she's saying, so the film has an inherent opacity (and therefore, dullness), but the salient metaphors are strong enough to transcend the jargon. Most interesting is how the vampires always give their victims and converts a choice - you can tell them to leave and they will - but no one takes it so strong is the addiction and so weak is the slogan "Just Say No". Characters in the film introduce each other to the "drug" and all become converts, and while Christopher Walken has a small role as Taylor's Vampires Anonymous sponsor, she will hit rock bottom (with a binge/orgy scene) and have to come out on the other side with a certain understanding of herself.
Guy Pearce is a war hero in the American-Mexican War who loses his taste for blood and violence and is sent to a remote outpost in the California mountains in Ravenous, and is then soon confronted by a cannibal (and indeed, a spreading cannibalism). Eating human flesh grants you fast-healing powers thanks to the spirit of the Native Americans' Wendigo, but otherwise, it plays as a straight western thriller. And as a comedy? While I won't dispute that there's a darkly comic vein to watching Robert Carlysle make people soup, the comedy is non-diegetic. It feels like someone with a suit and tie somewhere decided that Ravenous was ludicrous and imposed post-production "humor", which is to say a joke on the opening card and twonky music over certain scenes to make a pretty dark and bloody film about our addiction to violence a kind of camp experience. But the images, and the seriousness of Pearce's PTSD and how it relates to the theme, doesn't really jibe with that. Ravenous is a afraid of itself and therefore just okay.
In Onibaba ("Demon Woman"), director Kaneto ShindÅ (Kuroneko) shows a powerful ability to use nature in a filmic way - the tall grass, as much a refuge from the war as a labyrinthine killing ground; the night creating stark black and white images; and most of all, the pit, a hellmouth, dark and mysterious. Starting the story on that hole swallows us up and takes us to the other side, a hell on the periphery of armed conflict, where the horror genre is inferred, but only confirmed in the last reel - strange spaces, murderous women, sinful lust, and that music, driving beats punctuated by disturbing screams that might or might not be diegetic. The sound design is very strong. Two women, their husbands lost to the war, a forced to kill stray samurai and sell their gear for food, their dynamic disturbed by a callous deserter who wants sex from the younger woman. A cursed mask eventually enters the story as a means to bring back some semblance of order, but that order is hellish. At the end, I think we have to stop kidding ourselves that the original status quo was in any way normal. What's great about Onibaba is that you really never know where it's going to go next; it's wholly original.
Rewatching 1992's iconic Aladdin, I'm reminded of how it's one of Robin Williams' best comic performances. Not only does the Genie justify all sorts of crazy anachronisms (which can be distracting in other Disneys of this era, a bit like the sex jokes are here), but it's impossible to tell where the script ends and Williams begins. They just let him improvise and go mad with impressions and jokes, then animated the character accordingly. Like ripples in a pond, it then (and I may be inventing this cause and effect) became permission to go wild with the animation and visual gags throughout. Jafar's wizardry is another example of imaginative visuals, and the Flying Carpet is a winning notion for a Disney sidekick (and there are MANY in this movie), as well as one of the best CG effects of 90s Disney (which usually annoy me). But like The Lion King, the story is a little fast for me. There's no massive jump cut through time or anything, but some of the songs could go longer, and I thought Jasmine should have been made sultan, or given the power of one, rather than HAVE to marry Aladdin. Historically (or mythically) inaccurate or not, it felt like her arc (she was Shakespeare's Hal, where Aladdin was just pretending as "Al"). Maybe I just want better for her because my sister named her daughter after her. And I want to ask the animators just how much of an inspiration they took from Asterix and Cleopatra, because some character designs feel very familiar.
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