It’s a good scream

Watching Blow Out by Brian De Palma and continuing my struggle to rethink how I watch movies

Previously on Spectre Collie, I finally watched Phantom of the Paradise and although I still don’t really like it, I was forced to admit that I might have been wrong about Brian De Palma all these years.

My friend Jake recommended that if I’m coming around on De Palma, I might be interested in Blow Out, the conspiracy thriller from 1981 that reworks Blow-Up from a 1960s mod fashion photographer into a Reagan-era movie sound designer.

Based on its premise — John Travolta’s sound designer character is recording effects for a slasher movie one night when he hears a gunshot that proves a fatal car crash wasn’t an accident — and my familiarity of De Palma movies in the late 70s and early 80s, I’d expected it to be a more lurid and shallower version of The Conversation. This was backed up by the Criterion Collection’s cover for their version, which is technically accurate, but in my opinion so completely misrepresents the overall tone and look of the movie that it verges on false advertising.

That assumption was one of the vestiges of my former life as an Arrogant Failed Film Student. “Failed” is key there, since it’s a snobbery inspired by resentment, the feeling of I could’ve done better than these hacks, if I’d only gotten the chance! I’m still in the process of putting that past version of myself to rest, where “to rest” means laying him down comfortably in bed, whispering You can rest now, your struggles are past, and smothering him quietly with a pillow. Preferably with a Quentin Tarantino movie blasting in the background.

In actuality, Blow Out didn’t feel like a re-imagining, a retread, or a rip-off of either of its most obvious influences. It felt more like another case of De Palma making overt reference to his inspirations, borrowing the set-up of Blow-Up and the mood of The Conversation, and letting them form the structure of the very specific style of movie he wanted to make. I feel like I could’ve skipped the opening credits and still realized within a minute or two that this was a Brian De Palma movie.

Continue reading “It’s a good scream”

One Thing I Like About Lake Mungo

Lake Mungo is a fictional documentary about ghost sightings that’s most horrifying for what it implies

For years, I’ve been seeing and hearing people talk about Lake Mungo with a kind of reverence that I figured must be overblown. People wouldn’t hesitate to call it the scariest movie they’d ever seen, or just as often “the scariest movie you’ve never seen!” since it didn’t get a lot of attention when it was released in 2008. I would frequently hear it described as a slow burn until that scene, which I could only assume was so shocking and horrifying that watching it would leave me forever scarred.

One of the movie’s highest-profile evangelists was Mike Flanagan, which is a little bit ironic, since I feel like I might’ve had a stronger reaction to Lake Mungo if I hadn’t already seen several of the same ideas played out in The Haunting of Hill House.

Familiarity with the work that was inspired by it, plus years of built-up expectations from hearing it praised so often, makes me think that I might have just waited too long to watch Lake Mungo. I thought it was very well made, and more importantly, that the most unsettling idea behind it is a smart and profound one. But ultimately, it just didn’t have a big impact on me.

I should mention that I watched it in the worst possible conditions: on a bright afternoon, using Plex’s free on demand streaming, which meant there were two minutes of ads for every ten minutes of screen time. If you haven’t seen it and want the full effect, I strongly recommend spending a few bucks to watch it ad-free, and watching it alone at night.

It’s made up entirely of interviews with the family and friends of a teenage girl who died by drowning, along with elements of “found footage” like photos, video clips, news footage, and cell phone recordings.

A casual watch would suggest that everything that makes it a horror movie is in that found footage; there’s a lot of zooming in on photos to reveal a mysterious figure barely visible standing in the background. That’s a creepy gimmick that may still have been novel when the movie was released, but has certainly become overfamiliar now. If you watch it as if it were just another found footage movie, you’d probably go away declaring that it’s boring and not at all scary.

That’s the most shallow possible take on the movie, though. The real depth of the movie comes from everything that we learn after the “jump scare,” when many of the ideas that had been seeded earlier in the movie all start to collide with each other.

And the thing I like the most about it is also the thing that will likely turn off anyone looking for “the scariest movie you’ve ever seen:” its realistic feeling of restraint. It plays so convincingly as a documentary throughout. Most of the footage is too grainy, shaky, or too hard to make out details that it just doesn’t seem interesting enough for a horror movie. (And for the parts that do seem obviously scary, an in-story explanation is given).

Even more than that, the performances from everyone are near flawless. No one is “bad,” and the worst you get is the occasional hint of artifice that reminds you that these are actors. Particularly good are the actors playing the girl’s parents and brother, who nail the tone of people who’ve gone through something horrible, but are repressing it because they know that they’re on camera. It probably helps that it’s an Australian movie, so everybody speaks with a matter-of-fact inflection that turns up at the end? Like every statement is a question? And there’s things that are being left unsaid because they’re being polite?

It’s kind of the opposite of a found footage movie like The Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity, since it deliberately avoids scenes that are designed to feel like they’re happening in the moment. In Lake Mungo, everyone is talking about events from some distance away, and they’re careful to say only the things that are appropriate to say in a documentary. The artifice of the documentary format actually makes it feel more real, since you’re never challenged by an image that seems implausible or an emotional outburst that seems melodramatic.

Which all means that the implications of the photos and recordings you see in Lake Mungo are much scarier than the recordings themselves. The lingering weight of the ending comes largely from seeing the surviving members of a family that’s been through horrible events but can now speak about it calmly and directly with a documentary crew. Essentially, it becomes a haunted house story where the real horror comes after the family finds closure.

One Thing I Love About Paddington 2

The most remarkable thing about Paddington 2 might be its casting

With everything that works so well in Paddington 2, it’s hard to pick a stand-out, but I’ll say that the most remarkable thing to me is the casting.

Not just Brendan Gleeson and Hugh Grant, although they’re both great, very funny and clearly having fun. And Grant seems to love poking fun at himself. I especially liked how Phoenix’s home was absolutely filled with headshots of Hugh Grant throughout his career.

What I really mean is the casting of the title character. I realize that Ben Whishaw is credited, but I know what he looks like. And I’ve seen three of these movies now, and I’ve never once had even the hint of a glimmer of a suspicion that Paddington was anything other than a real, talking bear interacting with a ton of UK character actors.

I know that there was an extremely talented and likely gigantic team of modelers, animators, and effects artists all working on the character. And the movies even go out of their way to show off their work, like a stage magician pulling rings over his floating assistant, to prove that there are no wires. They have Paddington diving into water, getting fluffed up by static electricity or hair dryers, standing in rain, and probably a dozen other things that my ignorance of CGI means I don’t fully understand how difficult it is to pull off. But all that work is invisible, because he’s simply a fully real character.

Part of the reason is because the movie never acts as an effects showcase, but just takes it as a given that Paddington is a real talking bear in the middle of London. (Which is also something that the effects work makes possible, of course). It never even enters your mind to wonder how something was done, because it’s obvious: he’s really there. I spend the entire runtime thinking about how a particular piece of 2D animation was done, or how exactly the screenplay is working, or how the themes are playing off of each other, all without questioning the main character.

In fact, I spent an embarrassingly long time in Paddington 2 wondering how exactly they’d managed to have Paddington and Aunt Lucy walking so seamlessly through a computer-generated pop-up book.

But my favorite scene of Paddington 2 is a brief one, where Mrs Brown is walking through Windsor Gardens, passing many of the same neighbors that we saw at the start of the movie. Now, the street is gray and colorless. The people are brusque or absent-minded, and they’re all clearly having a bad day.

We’d just seen a fantastic sequence where Paddington had quickly had a dramatic effect on all of the prisoners and the prison itself, transforming the miserable canteen into a charming cafe. Here, we’re seeing what happens without Paddington around. It’s not quite as dramatic, but it’s clear that his absence is making life worse for everyone. Things are just so much better when he’s around.

The way that Paddington 2 treats Paddington the “actor” and Paddington the character is what makes the movie, and in fact the whole series, so magical. By insisting that the character is real, it does for adults what we adults like to do for children in theme parks: treat the mascots as the real thing, and never refer to them as performers in costumes. It insists that the magic isn’t confined to the movie itself, but is all around us all the time. And by showing the transformative effect of kindness and consideration, and especially by showing us what happens without it, it reminds us of how much we can do with so little effort.

Paddington 2 has the perfect ending, in that Paddington is rewarded not for his adventures catching a thief and retrieving a stolen book, but for making the lives of his family, friends, and neighbors better than it would be without him.

One Thing I Love About Paddington

The first Paddington is a perfect example of the difference between a family comedy and a kids’ movie

I couldn’t watch Paddington in Peru without confessing that I hadn’t seen either of the first two movies, and I’m still in the process of correcting that grave lapse in judgment on my part.

I loved Paddington, as I expected to. What I didn’t expect was that I’d go away thinking I’d watched them in the correct order. Paddington in Peru was a fantastic introduction to all of these characters and their universe, a celebration of joyfulness and kindness and creativity. Many of its most magical ideas — like the tree mural withering and blossoming along with the family, the dollhouse view of the Browns’ home, and the insertion of cutaways and beautiful animated sequences — were all seeded in the first movie, but I wasn’t disappointed to see that they weren’t wholly original. They felt not like retreads, but acknowledging what makes the storytelling of these movies so wonderful, with the benefit of a decade’s worth of advancements in visual effects.

But while I still love the third movie, I at least have a better understanding of the consistent criticism that it felt slight compared to the first two. The main reason, I think, is that Paddington in Peru‘s themes are more universal takes on family, belonging, and kindness. Paddington is more pointedly about refugees, taking care of people who are different from us, and how London’s multiculturalism is something to be celebrated. All an especially important reminder in the midst of the right-wing xenophobia that led to Brexit.

What’s remarkable is how it can have such a clear and specific message — amidst countless other family movies with much more generic messages like “believe in yourself” and “family is important” — without feeling like a lecture or a sermon. It all coexists happily with everything else in the movie, never fading into the background of a kid’s wacky slapstick cartoon adventure, but never becoming such a focus that you can quickly and simply say “this is what this movie is about.”

It’s like the calypso band that serves as the movie’s Greek chorus, seen as characters pass by without acknowledging, singing a song that reflects the characters’ current mood, reminding us of not only what’s happening in the movie but also that all the vibrancy of post-millennial London was because of multicultural influences, not in spite of them.

Even the xenophobic Mr Curry, the direct mouthpiece for bigots complaining about people moving into the neighborhood and bringing their “jungle music,” isn’t allowed to become the focus of the movie’s conflict. He’s a buffoonish side character, and the movie doesn’t bother making him out to be more than a nuisance. The main conflict, in what is the movie’s most ingenious gag, is a villain trying to turn Paddington into a stuffed bear. And I hate to undermine the joke by making it more explicit than even the movie does, but come on. That is just inspired.

There’s a long trend in family movies of making sure that all of the content is carefully compartmentalized according to age, sensibility, and demographic value. It’s been going on for so long, in fact, that we’ve fallen into the habit of praising the compartmentalization itself. How many times have you read the review of a “family movie” that has a line about references or jokes that “fly over the heads of the little ones?” And it’s described as the height of cleverness on the part of the filmmakers, for being able to deliver crass, commercial, zany slapstick to the kids while still giving the grown-ups the dick jokes they crave, so they don’t have to suffer through it alone.

Paddington responds with an alternate approach: why not just make the stuff for kids actually good? So that the adults enjoy it, too, instead of having to suffer through it?

There’s plenty of slapstick in Paddington, and the trailer makes it seem as if that’s the entire movie. But even the broadest, most trailer-worthy gags are part of what is simply a masterfully-constructed comedy, packed with jokes that work for any age level. Paddington uses the family’s toothbrushes to clean his ears, pulling out huge gobs of earwax; later, Mr Brown is brushing his teeth and looks suspiciously at the toothpaste tube. Mr Brown dresses as a cleaning lady and gets hit on by a security guard, a classic that goes back to Looney Toons and further; afterwards, there’s an extended gag about his not looking like the picture on his badge that is just a perfectly-executed comedy routine.

I felt like there was nothing in the movie that was aimed solely at one part of the crowd or the other; it’s aimed at everyone, and everyone could enjoy it to differing degrees. Paddington eats a suitcase full of marmalade on his trip, he’s lying over-full in a lifeboat, the ship’s horn goes off, he looks around embarrassed to see if he’s the one that’s made that sound. That’s the kind of timeless gag that appeals to both the 10-year-old boy and the 53-year-old man who still has a 10-year-old boy’s sense of humor.

And there are just brilliantly conceived and executed gags throughout. Just a few more of my favorites: putting Paddington into a van that reads “taxi” and then closing the door to reveal it says “taxidermist.” Paddington taking the “dogs must be held” sign too literally. The Browns arriving at the hospital as long-haired bikers and leaving the hospital as overcautious first parents in a beige station wagon. Nicole Kidman’s room full of stuffed animal heads mounted on the wall, then the secret doorway that reveals all of the animals’ rears are mounted on the opposite side.

Paddington does hit all the story beats of “a kid’s movie,” but to me they felt like natural parts of an action-comedy’s structure, instead of purely formulaic or manipulative. I did cry at a few points, but it was when the movie showed an act of kindness, like when the royal guard silently offers Paddington shelter and a selection of emergency snacks from underneath his own hat.

The overwhelming feeling I get from both Paddington movies I’ve seen so far is the reminder that none of the messages we get from family movies are supposed to be just for kids. There’s nothing juvenile or simplistic about having the courage to take risks, being compassionate to other people, or being kind. Considering how many adults seem to have forgotten the basics to such a degree that we all deserve a hard stare, it’s good to see a story that doesn’t encourage us to tune out the parts we think don’t apply to us. And it’s good to see filmmakers recognize that “family movie” means something you watch with your kids, and not just in the same room as them.

The Future: Beef

I finally watched Phantom of the Paradise, and it prompted me to re-evaluate my snobbery and how I think of movies

There is exactly one moment in Phantom of the Paradise that works for me, without any kind of reservation or qualification. It’s the press conference where our villain Swan introduces the world to his new performer. “Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you the future: Beef.” The camera pans over to a coffin, which is opened to reveal a curly-haired glam rocker in makeup, who looks to the camera and snarls.

Paul Williams plays it completely straight-faced — as does the movie itself — and even though the previous scene went through a line-up of possible replacements for the nostalgia band that the new act was replacing, the revelation of Beef still came as a surprise to me. It’s a weird, genuinely funny moment that still works over 50 years later.

My enchantment with Beef didn’t last long, since the very next scene shows him to be a stereotype of a queer man that honestly feels too lazy to be offensive. I was going to include a YouTube clip I’d found of Beef’s introduction, but I hadn’t noticed that the description of the video itself has the f-slur. Is it just homophobic, or is it a queer fan of the movie “taking it back?” I don’t care!

I did find an interview with Gerrit Graham talking about the process of coming up with the character, where “process” meant Brian De Palma trying to find euphemisms for what he wanted without actually saying “gay”1Including “like Little Richard,” which is almost charming, and Graham doing the first thing he could think of, and then sticking with that for his entire performance.2Don’t get too attached to Beef; he doesn’t last long (spoiler?).

It felt gratifying to hear that from someone who was involved in the production — instead of someone writing about the movie long after it’d achieved whatever “cult classic” status it has now — because it fit in with the overall impression I had of the movie: ultimately, it doesn’t really warrant all the re-interpretation and analysis it’s gotten over the years, because it’s just hell of corny. It feels like a comedy made by people who don’t have a very sophisticated sense of humor, that happens to include queer characters without actually knowing any queer people.

Beef’s big musical number seemed to me to be what you get if a bunch of extremely straight people tried to make The Rocky Horror Picture Show.3So basically, I guess: KISS. I’d initially thought it was derivative, but Paradise came out a year before Rocky Horror, but a year after the stage production that became the movie. So instead of going too far down that rabbit hole to figure out the specifics, I’m content to just conclude that they were two projects drawing from a lot of the same inspirations, made with very different mindsets.

The most obvious is that the musical in Paradise is on a set inspired by German expressionist movies, while Rocky Horror pointedly bases itself on more modern B-movies. Brian De Palma was a movie fan making movies filled with references to his favorite styles and directors, making a goofy slapstick comedy musical version of Faust. The glam rock elements were included not because of any higher-minded agenda, but simply because that was the flavor of the moment in 1974, just like Sha Na Na-style nostalgia bands had been previously.

Really, the whole idea of my trying to categorize everything into groups of Gross And Offensive, Fun But Dated Camp, or Genuinely Funny Absurdism is itself a post-Twitter phenomenon. That’s when I started trying to analyze whether I was enjoying stuff at the expense of other people, which most often takes the form of being offended on other people’s behalf.

Continue reading “The Future: Beef”
  • 1
    Including “like Little Richard,” which is almost charming
  • 2
    Don’t get too attached to Beef; he doesn’t last long (spoiler?).
  • 3
    So basically, I guess: KISS.

One Thing I Kind of Like About Death of a Unicorn

Death of a Unicorn reminded me of the 1980s, in that it’s the kind of movie they hardly ever make anymore

The two most genuinely good and surprising aspects of Death of a Unicorn are the performances of Will Poulter and Téa Leoni as two members of the awful rich family at the center of the plot. They took characters designed to be cartoonishly broad satire and somehow found a hook to make them more interesting.

Poulter does it by taking the familiar rich, arrogant, young dimwit and committing completely to his near-total lack of self-awareness. There’s something vaguely human at the heart of the cartoon, as he makes the character truly awful but somehow understandable: this is the natural result of someone who’s never for a moment in his life wanted for anything. Plus the hilarious detail that he’s perpetually dressed in short shorts.

But I think Leoni is the star of the movie, playing the matriarch/implied trophy wife of the family as a woman who’s spent so long spinning her self-serving nature into a kind of performative compassion that she never turns it off. Her face is perpetually twisted in an expression of heartfelt concern, her voice laden with sympathy as she makes it clear that she only wants what’s best for everybody.

It’s especially neat after seeing Mickey 17‘s much more blunt take on cartoonishly awful rich people. The characters in Death of a Unicorn are clearly horrible, but at the same time personable and even friendly. There’s always a sense that their selfishness and outright evil are enabled by generating enough plausible deniability. And not just for themselves, but for the people who work for them, who can tell themselves that they’re not really that bad, as far as bosses go.

But their performances are really the only inspired aspects of Death of a Unicorn, and nothing else in the movie stands out as original or even remarkable. I definitely wouldn’t call it a bad movie, since it works okay as a violent action comedy, and there are a few genuinely funny moments. It seems like all the elements are there for a can’t-fail, effects-driven black comedy.

You’ve got Paul Rudd, Jenna Ortega, and Richard E Grant as leads, all delivering exactly on the kinds of things you expect them to bring to a movie.1And no more, which is part of the issue. Even the casting of secondary characters is spot on to the point of feeling like overkill: Sunita Mani is always great, Jessica Hynes is recognizably likable even when playing completely against type, and I was initially excited to see Steve Park, who I know mostly from his unforgettable scene in Fargo. But of everyone, only Anthony Carrigan seems to have enough to work with to turn into an actual character.

So I was more left with the sense that I’m impressed the movie exists at all. You just don’t see this much money and talent being devoted to a comedy these days, especially not one that is violent and gory enough to limit its potential audience.2For other people as sensitive to blood and gore as I am: it’s all kept at the Universal Horror Nights level, and I never thought it felt real enough to be upsetting or nauseating. If you’re super-sensitive to animal cruelty, it’s there in the title, and probably the most upsetting scene for me involved sawing off the unicorn’s horn. (Spoiler: it gets better). I was actually reminded of Death Becomes Her, and there’s even a similar shot to the well-known one in that movie, where a character is framed looking through the gaping hole left in another character’s body.

Before anybody objects to the comparison: this isn’t nearly as good as Death Becomes Her, because it’s not anywhere near as clever, original, and inventive. Also, Death of a Unicorn doesn’t have nearly the budget, even before being adjusted for inflation, so the effects feel more like an independent film than a showcase for ILM. But it feels like the kind of project that was more common in the 1980s and early 1990s: a one-off comedy project that wasn’t fully horror (like say The Substance), or sci-fi (like Mickey 17), or action comedy (like The Author of This Blog Post Is Drawing a Blank At the Moment), but a mix of multiple genres.

It might be damning with faint praise to say that the best thing about Death of a Unicorn is that it reminded me of better movies, but I think it’s more a case of its reach exceeding its grasp. Maybe the fact that the movie doesn’t feel shockingly inventive and original is a sign that we’ve become spoiled for choice in genre fiction, and that the problem isn’t that the concepts are too weird, but not weird enough.

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    And no more, which is part of the issue.
  • 2
    For other people as sensitive to blood and gore as I am: it’s all kept at the Universal Horror Nights level, and I never thought it felt real enough to be upsetting or nauseating. If you’re super-sensitive to animal cruelty, it’s there in the title, and probably the most upsetting scene for me involved sawing off the unicorn’s horn. (Spoiler: it gets better).

My Criterion Closet

I bought too many movies

I’m sure it’s just an oversight, but for some reason the people at the Criterion Collection have yet to send me my invitation to pick movies from The Criterion Closet. Probably a clerical error and nothing to do with the fact that I’m neither famous nor interesting.

But last week they had a sale where every movie in stock was 50% off, and naturally I reacted by going apeshit in their online store. In my defense, I did trim down the list significantly, and if you amortize the cost across the past several years that I’ve been pledging to pick them up someday, then it’s really not that bad.

Have a look at my purchases, won’t you.

Miller’s Crossing
For a long time, this was my favorite movie, and it’s still up there in competition with Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Empire Strikes Back. It’s a masterpiece, and my experience watching it the first time is still burned into my memory. I don’t know if the story is true that the Coens invented the slang used throughout the movie, because who’re you gonna believe? But I can imagine it’s true, because the scenes of characters firing lines of dialogue back and forth can be every bit as gripping as all the murders and fiery shootouts and tense showdowns.

Blood Simple
An experiment in style and suspense, where you become completely invested in the fates and livelihoods of some of the rock-stupidest people. I already have at least one other copy of this, but I wanted the top-of-the-line edition, if only for the special features.

Inside Llewyn Davis
Not my favorite of the Coen Brothers movies, but I do want to get definitive editions of all of them. I’ve kind of avoided reading too much about the Coens themselves or their process, to “preserve the mystique” as Llewyn Davis would say1I think that’s the phrase he uses? but also I live in constant fear that I’m going to find out that my interpretation of all their brilliant movies is entirely wrong. But this one has an interview with the Coens and Guillermo del Toro, which sounds fascinating.

Pan’s Labyrinth
My initial reaction to this one, way back when, was that it was excellent, but I hated watching it. I was completely unprepared at the time for how violent and scary it was. I’d probably have an easier time watching it again now, especially since I have a better idea what to expect. Regardless, I wanted to have a Criterion-worthy copy, because even though I didn’t enjoy it, I could recognize that it’s a classic.

Police Story/Police Story 2
Police Story 3 (Supercop) is what started my whole obsession with Michelle Yeoh, but I’ve never seen the first two. And I realized I don’t think I’ve ever seen another non-Hollywood Jackie Chan movie! As I understand it, these are as close as you can get to definitive Hong Kong action movies, so I’m really looking forward to completing the trilogy.

His Girl Friday
A candidate for my short list of favorite movies, I saw this one as a freshman in college and immediately loved it. Watching it felt like it was somehow unstuck in time, since the dialogue and performances and humor all felt so modern, even though the props and costumes clearly come from the late 1930s. I’ve got a copy of this on DVD somewhere, but it was a grainy, low-effort version that most likely came from a bargain bin.

Black Narcissus
This and The Red Shoes are the two Powell and Pressburger movies that have been on my to-watch list forever, but I haven’t yet seen. And based on what I know of the latter, I’m content to rent it or stream it at some point. But every still that I’ve ever seen from Black Narcissus makes it seem gorgeous and intriguing. I got introduced to Powell and Pressburger in my freshman year of college as well, with Stairway to Heaven/A Matter of Life and Death, and I was immediately a fan.

Honorable Mentions

A few others I had in the shopping cart until I regained some impulse control:

The Heroic Trio/Executioners
The Heroic Trio is absolutely insane, a nonsensical spectacle intended to put together three huge Hong Kong stars and a ton of over-the-top stunts. The sequel is not as fun, in my opinion, since it felt like they took everything that made the first movie so enjoyable and then tried to make an objectively good movie out of it. I had this in my cart but removed it at the last minute, and I almost instantly regretted it. I ended up buying the streaming versions instead (they’re available through Apple’s TV app, if that’s your thing, and also on the Criterion Channel streaming service), since I honestly put them in the “watch this crazy thing with me” category instead of the must-own heirloom category.

The Devil’s Backbone
Another Guillermo del Toro movie I saw around the same time as Pan’s Labyrinth. I remember liking it quite a lot, but I don’t remember enough of it to make it something I’d want to keep going back to.

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinnochio
I haven’t seen it yet, which feels like an oversight, but I’ve got a backlog of animated movies that I know are likely brilliant, but I still haven’t gotten around to actually watching any of them. I briefly considered getting a trio of del Toro’s movies (I’m not particularly interested in Cronos), but luckily for my credit balance, I decided to stop at one.

The Night of the Hunter
This movie is weird and brilliant, but the only part of the Criterion edition that seemed compelling was an included clip of the cast performing a deleted scene on the Ed Sullivan show.

Incidentally, I think this post violates the whole intended format of The Criterion Closet, since I think it’s supposed to be more than just somebody making a shopping list of movies, some of which they haven’t seen, and saying “that movie was cool.” If anybody’s interested (for some reason) in a list of my must-haves from Criterion’s catalogs, that I’ve actually watched, then I could do that at some point.

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    I think that’s the phrase he uses?

Two Things I Love About Nosferatu

Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu strips away all the subtlety and subtext from vampire stories, and then adds a little back. Spoilers.

I absolutely adored Nosferatu for the first hour or so.

I’d heard it was beautiful, and that was underselling it. It seems to have taken “every frame a painting” as a challenge: can you make something with a run time over 2 hours in which you can pause at literally any moment and get a fantastically gorgeous image?

But more than that, I loved that it was so gloriously ultra-gothic in just about every aspect in just about every moment. Every member of the cast was completely committed to the concept, somehow balancing a sense of overwhelming Victorian repression with a director who must’ve ended every take shouting “MORE!!!”

Lily-Rose Depp deservedly got praise for her performance, since it required her not only to be sympathetic and believable in a world in which the melodrama was kept at dangerously high levels throughout, but also to contort her body and give in to violent epileptic fits. But I was almost as impressed by Simon McBurney as Herr Knock, for making the most interesting version of Renfeld that I’ve ever seen. He wasn’t content with the stock actor’s exercise of playing a madman, but took a character that had to be visibly over the top in a movie populated entirely by batshit crazy people, and somehow made it genuinely frightening and compelling.

I was also surprised by Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s performance, although I probably shouldn’t have been, since he’s well established that he embraces weird parts that don’t just rely on his being impossibly good-looking. His part is kind of a thankless one, requiring him to be the voice of reason and skepticism in a world that is clearly irrational, and he could’ve just disappeared into the background as nothing more than the guy who occasionally drives the plot forward. But from his opening scene onwards, he managed to give off a paternalistic arrogance that matched the energy of everything else. He seemed to love playing a cartoon.

All of the performances worked because the filmmaking itself was so committed to the bit. The story shifts between dreams and the waking world so frequently, and so abruptly, that it was never really clear which was which. Is the entire story a dream, or is the world so weird that the dreams are just as real as anything else? One scene I loved is when our heroine and her husband are at their friends’ home, their hosts bid them good night to take their bizarre children up to bed, and Thomas and Ellen kiss… and it just turns into a full-on make-out session right there. The door’s barely even closed before they’re going at it!

I think my favorite thing about the first half of the movie, though, is how the filmmaking itself becomes dream-like. With rare exceptions, it’s not prone to melodramatic flourishes like cross-dissolves or dutch angles or elaborate camera movements. There are hard cuts, sometimes timed so as to be disorienting, as a scene abruptly ends. And for the most part, the camera is either static or on a slow horizontal pan, as if the viewer is dispassionately taking everything in. When the camera does do something exotic, it stands out as especially significant and unnerving — our first time seeing Knock conducting one of his rituals, for instance, in which the camera sweeps up as if we’re watching him from above.

Continue reading “Two Things I Love About Nosferatu”

One Thing I Like About Black Bag

Black Bag is a simultaneously 21st-century and old-fashioned spy movie that’s all about trust

Black Bag (alternate title: Spies Be Talkin’) is about George and Kathryn, a long-married couple who work as spies for the British government. The title is a reference to the code phrase that agents use with each other when they’re asked a question that they’re not permitted to answer. The story begins when George is assigned the mission of finding out who within the agency has been selling confidential information, and the short list of suspects includes his wife.

I spent much of the movie feeling as if I had very little idea what was actually going on. For something advertised as a stylish spy thriller, it’s extremely talky, and the combination of accents plus mostly-naturalistic audio meant that I could only make out around 60% of the dialogue. I was certain that it was seeding bits of intrigue that I was missing, and that by the time the double- and triple-crosses started happening, I would be completely lost.

Plus it has such an aggressive sense of affected cool that it felt jarring. It’s all beautifully shot, and the score is excellent. And it’s more or less a given that Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender are going to be flawless and captivating no matter what they’re doing. But what they’re doing here is a whole lot of talking, and it feels at odds with the movie telling us that these characters are some of the coolest sons of bitches you ever saw. That what’s really sexy isn’t shootouts or one-night stands with femmes fatale or baccarat, but just seeing hot people being good at their jobs.

To me, it started to feel like what would happen if spy movies stopped being aspirational and decided instead to be reassuring. Aimed at a certain crowd of wealthy middle-aged people, people who’d reached a point in their lives when they had no desire to hang off of airplanes like Tom Cruise, but still wanted to feel like they had It. Yes, dammit, your quiet, conversational dinner parties are thrilling.

The movie opens with an extended sequence that was filmed as one long, uninterrupted take. It follows George through multiple levels of a crowded nightclub to meet his contact, past dozens of extras dancing, drinking and partying, at a bar and a dance floor below. And to me, it felt like a distractingly unnecessary flourish, a sequence that felt far more complicated to execute than what the movie required.

In retrospect, I could interpret it as kind of a bait-and-switch to set the tone: if you were expecting a spy thriller that would take you through the exotic nightlife of the world’s most interesting cities, this is not that. I can interpret it as setting up the conversation that follows and the theme that runs throughout the movie: the contrast between this loud, hedonistic life and the quiet monogamy of George and Kathryn’s relationship.

And I can even interpret the decision to film it all as one take as being an introduction to George’s character. It sets up the idea that he’s calm, quiet, and professional, and he relentlessly moves towards his goal, immune to any distractions. But this doesn’t read as such in the moment (because he’s not really contrasted against what any other agent would do in the same situation) and besides, the idea is explicitly stated outright by other characters multiple times throughout the movie.

Instead, it just seems like the message of the opening sequence was “Bitch, I’m Steven Soderberg! I do what I want! Just shut up and watch!”

And really, I should’ve just listened and followed instructions. Because there’s such a confident clarity of storytelling in Black Bag that cuts through any feeling of being confused by obtuse twists and turns. The movie is explicitly about trust, and I probably should’ve trusted that Soderberg has spent his career mastering the art of cinematic storytelling. Even the scenes that are straightforward this scene represents that idea moments are so well executed that they don’t come across as too heavy-handed.

For instance, the scenes when George is fishing, the first in particular. He’s out alone on a lake, silently processing all the information that he has so far, when his line catches. He’s methodically reeling it in as images of all the suspects flash in his mind. Just as it seems he’s about to make a crucial connection, both the idea and the fish get away from him.

But my favorite scene in the movie is earlier, and it’s a small moment but it’s executed perfectly. Kathryn has an upcoming trip out of London, and when George asks for any details, she simply responds “black bag.” George has found a movie ticket in the trash, causing him to suspect that Kathryn has already had a clandestine meeting in London that she didn’t tell him about. He asks her about the movie, and she claims she doesn’t know anything about it, seemingly avoiding making eye contact. He suggests that they see it together, and she agrees, without giving anything away to suggest that she might have seen it already.

We then get a shot of George and Kathryn sitting next to each other at the movie, filmed as if from the screen looking directly into the audience. There’s a sudden jump scare in the movie, and every single person in the audience is startled, except for Kathryn. Afterwards, George turns to look at Kathryn, and she nonchalantly offers him popcorn. Then there’s another sudden scare in the movie, and she jumps along with the rest of the audience.

It’s such a great example of storytelling without dialogue, trusting that the shot (filmed without close-up, and if I remember correctly, with almost no cuts) and the performances are going to make its meaning clear, conveying an unsettling sense of growing suspicion that George is not allowed to comment on.

It all means that Black Bag is one of the most passive experiences I’ve had watching anything in a long time. I wasn’t sorting through some complex scheme, second-guessing everything, making predictions about what would happen next, but just absorbing everything I was being shown. And when it’s this well done, that’s not a bad thing at all. It didn’t need to feel like a huge, explosive spy thriller (although there is indeed an explosion), but a smaller, character-driven story that’s simply an entertaining time at the movies.

Opus: Coda

One extra observation about the movie Opus. Spoilers for the movie.

It’s been a couple of days since I saw Opus, and my opinion of it hasn’t significantly changed — I still thought it was fine, and I seem to have liked it a good bit more than the consensus on Rotten Tomatoes.

But there’s just enough weight to it that it’s been bouncing around in the back of my mind. I still don’t believe that the finale hits as hard as it could have. Partly because it’s presented as if it were a haunting, final twist, even though it doesn’t give enough weight to the most interesting questions.

The movie acts as if the most compelling question is “what really happened?” and then gives a lengthy answer to that. The question of “where are all the bodies?” is raised but not given enough time for us to really think about it, and then we see the answer played out in montage, as if that were the key question. And the most important question: “why did you do it?” is answered in a fairly lengthy conversation about evolution through strength vs intellect vs creativity, that doesn’t really answer anything we care about in that moment. The ideas behind the cult should’ve been made explicit earlier in the movie; the thing I cared most about at the end of the movie were the ideas behind the plan.

Another scene that I thought was a missed opportunity was Ariel’s conversation with her friend/crush-haver, the thrust of which was that she’s too mid to be interesting. In retrospect, I feel like this scene was working too hard to establish Ariel’s inherent likability, instead of planting the seed of an idea that would make the finale hit home harder. Ariel’s motivations seemed perfectly reasonable, so her friend’s comments just came across as cruel instead of helpful “real talk.” We all want our work to be noticed and valued, no matter whether we “deserve” it or not.

I think what’s most interesting about the movie ends up being lost, because it lets Ariel’s most significant character flaw get muddled: she was trying to ride the coattails of more famous and accomplished people, instead of trusting in her own voice from the start. But the friend just essentially says, “there’s nothing interesting about your own voice,” which just reinforces what everyone else is saying throughout the movie. I can understand having a character who’s giving bad advice to the protagonist, and I can understand a character being a manifestation of Ariel’s self-doubt, but I think even a less-corny version of “I’ll show him!” would’ve been stronger. Or better yet, some actual self-reflection on Ariel’s part.1I admit I should allow for the possibility that this was the movie explicitly telling us that Ariel’s not as brilliant a writer as she thinks she is, and that the reason she’s writing about famous people is because she actually doesn’t have anything interesting to say. But I say that if “Ariel’s not that great a writer, actually” was the point all along, and Opus is on some level a horror movie about self-delusion, then it’s a mistake to cast someone who just seems to be good at everything, like Ayo Edebiri.

As it was, there was nothing in the screenplay giving voice to the idea that Ariel was essentially the same as all the other influencers, paparazzi, celebrity interviewers, and writers who’ve become famous for writing about the accomplishments of other, more famous people. And there’s a lot giving voice to the idea that she stands out from the rest because she’s got genuine talent that’s being unfairly overlooked.

Even in the finale, when the specific question of “why was I chosen?” comes up, the answer presented is that Ariel had written something that stood out to Moretti as a memorable turn of phrase. Not that it was her drive, or her ambition, or her willingness to write about other people before she was ready to write for herself. It’s frustrating, since this seems like it would’ve been the perfect opportunity to set up the reveal that was to follow. But the movie was unwilling to let a murderer implicate Ariel for her part in the plan; it had to insist that anyone with any taste at all could recognize Ariel’s unique talent.2Second-guessing again: I don’t remember the phrase itself, but I do remember thinking that it was nonsensical, like a teacher had an “unassuming chin” or something. At the time I just took it as a good-faith effort to write something that would sound like the kind of description a young, somewhat pretentious writer might choose. But if the movie is actually playing 4th-dimensional chess and I’m losing, then I suppose it could be an example of how Ariel was chosen not because her writing was good, but because it was memorable.

So the last shot has Ariel, on camera, looking haunted as she finally realizes what’s happened. But the movie makes it seem like her haunting realization is that the cult of “Levelists” is still out there, all around us! There’s one in the studio with me, right now! And she’s pointedly calling my non-fiction book a “novel” to discredit it! That makes it seem like she’s Cassandra, telling everyone the truth, but cursed by external forces so that no one will believe her.

But the most interesting idea of Opus, I think, is in how much Ariel had been complicit. It’s the idea that the media cannot comment on itself. Fame isn’t actually about being appreciated or even understood; it’s about being seen.

It’s an idea that’s especially relevant when authors are timing their shocking exposés not for when the truth matters the most, but when book sales would be the highest. Bob Woodward has gotten the most attention (and vitriol) from people looking to him for his President-destroying abilities, seemingly oblivious to the fact that we’re living in a “post-truth society.” And even oblivious to the fact that All the President’s Men has arguably become at least as notable for its place in popular culture as its place in journalism or American politics.

There are two scenes in Opus that communicate this idea really well: first is when Moretti is peeking at Ariel’s notebook, and he only comments on her spelling of “sycaphants.” (i.e. He doesn’t actually care whether she’s writing anything defamatory, just as long as she’s writing about him). Second is when she finally gets her one-on-one time with Moretti, with explicit permission to ask him freely about anything at all, and she chooses to ask whether he really bought Freddie Mercury’s teeth. It was a wild piece of random gossip from earlier in the movie, it’s possibly the least relevant piece of information to everything she’s seen in the compound so far, and yet it’s the one thing that’s stuck in her mind. Because as much as she thinks of herself as a journalist, she’s still captivated by what’s evocative more than what’s necessarily true.

That’s the interesting realization that gets lost at the end of the movie: that her motivation hadn’t been to spread the truth, but to use the truth as the hook to make herself be seen and heard.

Oh, and also one other thing I liked about Opus was the title card. It finally gets sprung on us after several minutes of introduction and setup, and I thought it was excellently timed.

  • 1
    I admit I should allow for the possibility that this was the movie explicitly telling us that Ariel’s not as brilliant a writer as she thinks she is, and that the reason she’s writing about famous people is because she actually doesn’t have anything interesting to say. But I say that if “Ariel’s not that great a writer, actually” was the point all along, and Opus is on some level a horror movie about self-delusion, then it’s a mistake to cast someone who just seems to be good at everything, like Ayo Edebiri.
  • 2
    Second-guessing again: I don’t remember the phrase itself, but I do remember thinking that it was nonsensical, like a teacher had an “unassuming chin” or something. At the time I just took it as a good-faith effort to write something that would sound like the kind of description a young, somewhat pretentious writer might choose. But if the movie is actually playing 4th-dimensional chess and I’m losing, then I suppose it could be an example of how Ariel was chosen not because her writing was good, but because it was memorable.

One Thing I Like About Opus

Opus undercuts its own messages about fame by casting a bunch of really talented people

The best thing about Opus is its casting. As soon as I heard “A24 horror movie starring Ayo Edebiri,” I was on board before the trailer even finished.

And it delivers on the promise of “A24 horror movie” just fine. It’s got an overall message that lands well enough, although it lands with a feeling of “okay, I get it,” instead of being as stunning and impactful as it was probably meant to. That’s true of the rest of the movie as well. It all works in context, but nothing punches through as an image or a moment that demands to be vividly remembered.

Now that I’ve got an Apple Watch, it means that I watch everything with a heart monitor attached, and I can tell that Opus was suspenseful because it was buzzing about elevated heart rate every few minutes. It’s a testament to the maturity and confidence of the filmmaking that so many of the horror movie moments are suggested rather than shown.

But the perfect casting throughout is really what stands out. The protagonist is so in line with Ayo Edebiri’s public persona that I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that it was written specifically for her.1Especially if you noticed that the character’s initials are the same as the actress’s. Like I didn’t notice for two days. She has to be grounded enough not to fall for all the trappings of fame, but still enough of a nerd to find famous people fascinating. She’s got to read as driven, ambitious, and under-appreciated, capable of far more than she’s allowed to do. The overall message only works if she’s a superstar in waiting. And she’s got to be movie-star beautiful, but it’s something that she can put on and take off; it’s not her identity.

(Is it too obvious that I’ve got a crush on Ayo Edebiri? Even if she is a nepo baby).

John Malkovich is, obviously, excellent at being a menacing and unsettling cult leader, as well as seeming like the kind of actor who’d love the chance to play an aging glam rocker. Murray Bartlett is great at being unctuous and self-absorbed but mostly sympathetic. Juliette Lewis is Juliette Lewising the hell out of things.

Even with the smaller parts (in terms of overall screen time), it becomes clear by the end that they were played by the perfect person, the only one who could immediately read as exactly the role they’re playing. This guy looks like mostly-silent, creepy henchman but can also read as a basically normal guy who’d become a fanatic. This woman is a bad guy but is somehow still trustworthy. And so on.

I was excited to see Amber Midthunder’s name in the opening credits, because I felt like she’d proven her star power with Prey and was going to get the chance to show her range. So I was initially disappointed that it seemed like Opus had wasted her for a thankless part. But put in context of the rest of the casting, though, I think they needed exactly what she brought to the part. Even without speaking, she gives off a sense of intensity and makes it immediately clear that she could mess you up without breaking a sweat.

In fact, there seemed to be an interesting age divide across the cast. For the most part, the older actors seemed to be capital-A Acting, while the younger ones were more grounded and naturalistic. I interpreted this as subtle reinforcement of the idea that younger generations would be savvy enough to see through the bullshit, while the older characters had been pursuing fame for so long that they’d stopped second-guessing it. They all speak as if they’d seen it all, but they were the most eager to get swept up in it, and even see it as a reward.

Nile Rodgers and The-Dream are credited for the music in Opus and also as executive producers, although I couldn’t tell if that were just the featured songs, or the overall score. The score is excellent, driving home the unsettling feeling of a creepy cult. But for the songs, it feels like another case of choosing exactly the right people. They have to come across as being brilliant enough to inspire rabid fanaticism. While I didn’t fall in love with them as much as the characters seemed to, the moments when the movie turned itself over to showcasing the music seemed the closest to punching through and becoming unforgettable.

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    Especially if you noticed that the character’s initials are the same as the actress’s. Like I didn’t notice for two days.

One Thing I Like About Black Sunday

An entirely unacademic take on Mario Bava’s classic gothic horror

Black Sunday (originally The Mask of the Demon) has been on my to-watch list for years, partly because of its place in horror movie history as Mario Bava’s official directorial debut, but mostly because of its amazing poster. I finally watched it last night1As is a common theme lately, as part of my break-up with Amazon, as I try to watch as much as I can on Amazon Prime Video before my subscription expires, and it’s easy to see why it was so influential.

I’m by no means enough of a movie buff, especially when it comes to classic horror, to be able to put the movie sufficiently in context. Honestly, I’m more of a fan of the overall aesthetic of classic horror than the movies themselves. Often, it feels like trying to dig through the detritus of censorship, dated performances, and special effects that are still in their infancy, just to find a few moments that feel relevant to modern audiences.

(An exception is The Bride of Frankenstein, which I’d always dismissed as another famous-for-being-famous relic of the classic Universal Monsters days, until I actually watched it and realized that it’s a straight-up masterpiece).2Not to mention being even more of an influence on Young Frankenstein than the original Frankenstein, like I’d always assumed.

But despite all of the aspects that make Black Sunday feel too dated to be relevant — the melodramatic and often nonsensical plot, the weird dubbing throughout, the makeup that sometimes seems more comical than horrific — there are several shots and scenes that stand out like nothing I’d seen before.

Notably, its gruesome opening sequence, which shows an unrepentant witch cursing her inquisitor brother before having the spike-filled “mask of Satan” nailed onto her face. It suggests far more than it shows, but what it shows is brilliant: the brutal spikes coming straight for the camera, a POV shot of the executioner wielding a massive hammer, and a side shot of the hammer pounding the mask into place. I found a pretty good video from the “History of Horror” channel putting Black Sunday in context with the rest of Mario Bava’s work, in particular pointing out that the more shocking moments were part of Italian cinema reacting to a long period of censorship under Mussolini and after WWII.

To me, it set the tone that anything could happen, especially when I considered that Psycho came out in the same year, and I’ve been hearing for years how shocking and scandalous it was for that movie to even show a toilet.

Not to spoil anything, but the rest of the movie feels much more conventional. We discover that its pseudo-vampires need to be killed via a spike through the left eye, which is never shown explicitly but is still traumatic for those of us especially sensitive to that kind of thing. For the most part, the creatures just seem to have some kind of skin condition. One of our vampires can only be recognized as such because his hair has turned white and he’s got a five o’clock shadow. I’d been expecting it all to be much more lurid, but overall it feels more like a few stand-out images tied together loosely by a traditional classic horror movie plot.

But some of those images are amazing. Princess Katja’s appearance, standing in the ruins of a chapel holding two black dogs, is one of the most famous. There are long sequences that feel like a big swing for a filmmaker in the late 50s, with pervasive darkness punctuated by small areas of light. In particular, there’s a pretty lengthy sequence of a man following a lantern-carrying guide through the dark catacombs underneath a castle, and the shots get darker and darker until we can see nothing but the light coming from the lantern itself.

My favorite shots, though, are just before that. A carriage has arrived to pick up one of our protagonists to take him to the castle. It’s full-on gothic. Solid black, led by two black horses driven by a partially-decomposing man-out-of-time all dressed in black. Black Sunday doesn’t use camera effects anywhere else that I could identify, but the shots of the carriage are done in slow motion. The horses gallop through a dense, pitch-black forest through fog, and it’s strikingly dream-like. Or more accurately, nightmare-like.

Mario Bava is often named as one of the progenitors — if not the creator — of giallo. I’m still not familiar enough with the genre to be making any blanket statements, but it feels as if the roots are here, even without the addition of lurid color.3Or maybe more accurately, even if the lurid colors here are pure black and bright white. Stories that fade into the background to allow strikingly stylistic images take prominence and become unforgettable.

The 1960 poster for Black Sunday
  • 1
    As is a common theme lately, as part of my break-up with Amazon, as I try to watch as much as I can on Amazon Prime Video before my subscription expires
  • 2
    Not to mention being even more of an influence on Young Frankenstein than the original Frankenstein, like I’d always assumed.
  • 3
    Or maybe more accurately, even if the lurid colors here are pure black and bright white.