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Here are only series & my reviews in English.
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Possession (1981)
Voodoo in my Berlin
If there can be one thing better than Possession, it's watching Possession without any preliminary briefing. No trailers, not even screenshots -- just the knowledge that somewhere I might've seen it being compared to Martyrs and Irreversible and. Oh boy??
But, if anything, I'd say it's about how Alzbetka (Little Otik 2000) grew up and immigrated to Germany where she attended the Tanzschule ruled by the Mother of Sighs for a while, but then she swapped the otherworldly colors for a grey capital and married a spy and became the sanest immigrant in Germany (this is because, unlike me, she was lucky to move to Berlin and not the Ruhr). But as she grew up, so did her inanimate paradise -- now made from more elaborate stuff than wood.
Because what else is left, when life is like that and the only color around is that of the yellow wallpaper? When the only times something around seems profoundly real in this place are when you look in the eyes of dying animals (ask G. H., by Clarice Lispector)? Obviously, the best partner is whom you conjure up yourself, even when your muse costs you your life -- even when this time, unlike in Mister Designer (1987), the Femme fatale with Medusa's eyes is the creator and not the muse.
(I think since Possession it was Mister Designer where I got so much aesthetic pleasure from simply looking at a character the last time (and also Suspiria, but I've already name-dropped it). Isabelle Adjani looks as if Alraune was Japanese. A cold-looking but passionate beauty who doesn't really provoke men into wrongdoings -- she is just being who she is, and they who they are. (The faithful wife of the samurai in the first part of Kwaidan hasn't punished him either -- he did that to himself, and then he saw her black hair.) She is generally perfectly described by Hanns Ewers long before the film was made -- with her fingers and eyes she indeed resembles a spider a little bit, and he has just the story about one.)
Beau Is Afraid (2023)
I'm thinking of abandoning modern art cinema
If not for credits, I'd never even think it could be made by the author of Midsommar -- but eventually, it makes some sense. It's as if Ari Aster has decided to make the exact opposite of Midsommar while still keeping some of his signature tropes (not the best of them, though).
In fact, I'd much rather believe it was made by Yorgos Lanthimos! Because. Horror devices with no horror whatsoever? Check. A social critique of so many things simultaneously that it also addresses nothing in particular? Weird obsession with and, at the same time, repulsion to sex? (Funnily, it's also as if one person just keeps making movies to watch Colin Farrell and now Joaquin Phoenix being daddies.) But Lanthimos can also be campier, I'll give him that. In his endeavors to operate by vibes, there's more gusto. No wonder Aster was so successful with a Scandinavian-themed movie -- even when he seems to let his imagination run wild, it's always somewhat reserved (but maybe the mutilation of the giant dick was in fact supposed to look like cardboard decorations, theatre and all). But what can do as a Swedish slow burn folk horror, feels stiff and hollow as an ode to visual arts/tale of the unconscious/Melmoth the Wanderer chased down by a PTSD-induced American Dream or whatever other comparison I can come up with if I let my own imagination run wild.
The thing is, there's nothing to be ashamed of in having a method, and it seems, the best method for Aster is a well-built, focused story, determined to reach its own conclusion, ominous and determinate from the very first scene. Because operating with vibes should not be everyone's strength. And eventually, Beau is Afraid is neither as climactic or disturbing as Inland Empire, nor as aesthetic or enigmatic as I'm Thinking of Ending Things, nor as gradual as Kafka or Camus, and also what again, for God's sake, is with the newest artsy directors and their raw fear of sex? In the last years, everything remotely sexy seems to not be a spice for horror or the release from it -- it became the horror. Apparently, now it can only be elevated if it's the very antithesis of horny. Everything is better than getting laid -- getting burned in a ritual, hit by a planet, escaping to a forest sect of celibates. In addition to not succeeding as an aesthetic statement, Beau is Afraid feels like an absolute disaster of a Freudian tale to someone who, like me, was lucky to learn about The Company of Wolves -- which is exactly a movie so Freudian that it can be both sexy and disturbing without being explicit but it's also too confusing to be creepy and too beautiful to be nonsensical. Even if it doesn't have Joaquin Phoenix being daddy in it.
(Oh, and I'm saying this all as a constantly mumbling person who generally feels 20 years older and is constantly afraid of absolutely everything. It takes some talent to make Beau unrelatable to me.)
Sleeping Beauty (1959)
Between blue and pink
I'd never believe that this film was planned right after The Snow White -- if anything, it doesn't look like *just* a decade older than it, either. Clearly a product of its time -- Marilyn Monroe marrying a charming prince, yadda-yadda -- it also has Medieval tapestry together with the most contemporary geometric stylization, and is thus, erm, kinda timeless? I can't believe there's just, like, a movie, which is 60 years old but also looks like those cartoons from Cartoon Network, where a character is a couple of triangles, but it is also better because it has so many textures and compositions and...
And the prince quite literally has his wet clothing stolen in the forest (and this clothing is a red riding hood -- quite fitting, concerning how a scenario like this -- stolen clothes -- is usually played to highlight feminine vulnerability) and then kidnapped and then saved by fairies who turn crumbling ruins into a rainbow (saved from another woman, mind you). One can argue about the traditional femininity and patriarchal role, but the gang of fairy burglars and a prince in distress isn't something to age so quickly. No wonder it's them who are so eager to switch between blue and pink. Why even give this Little Red Riding Hood a sword and a shield, if you can turn all the falling stones into bubbles? To think it was made only a decade after a movie which was basically an hour-long Tom and Jerry-style comedy about how important it is to wash your hands.
Heck (2020)
Object-oriented cinematography
Strangely, this short movie goes further than Skinamarink, despite being, basically, a proof of concept for it. In an attempt to depict an alien, hostile space, Heck reaches the logical conclusion: an enemy must go! It's as simple as that. Cosmic horror isn't just about large spaces and invisible but very powerful Skinamarinks in the wardrobe. Being alive is inhumane -- because at some point you can get a bit too alive. Both of these pieces feature a lot of toys and cereal -- something that used to bring happiness to children, but when times are dire, these inanimate objects (which can't experience fear of death and generally be influenced in any real way) envoke either envy or, in the worst case, fear -- once they abandon their eventless, withdrawn life and adhere to the evil will of a monster (even when, you know, usually it was you to whom your thing used to bring comfort). Only in this case (and this, again, makes Heck a more conceptually complete and profound work for me), even the mum is reduced to an inanimate, eventless object, just as any other person would be, because what can they do with a problem which exists in one's body -- and is thus, most probably, totally inaccessible?
Probably, the evolution towards what we have in Skinamarink was inevitable, since a full-length movie might be a bit more conventional if it has an enemy after all (and that is: something openly malevolent and separate, that can offer some screamers and make characters hurt themselves). But for me, it's precisely what Heck has for such an entity, that makes this title more profound, if somewhat less thrilling. An enemy (?) which doesn't even need to do anything, because your body can perfectly do that on its own -- basically, it's the very laws of existence that fulfil the monster's job.
And this all rhymes perfectly with Kyle Edward Ball's general method; he can show a wall and make some watch the screen through their fingers. Ineffectual and pretentious, you say? He could make a 2 hours long movie which went viral thanks to TikTok, i.e. Its users could make it through 2 hours of walls and feel something, so it's most probably more than that.
El orfanato (2007)
I Spy: Flowers in the Attic. What do you mean, it's horror?
Having learnt about this movie from the discussions around Rule of Rose, I wasn't totally unprepared to get a story which wasn't scary so much as sad. I've only learnt it was supposed to be a horror from other reviews. There's this similar approach to how Lake Mungo or Giorgino handle horror tropes: if there are suspenseful moments and creepy faces, this means nothing per se because there are so many other emotions you can do with them. Keeping its mood rather contemplative than ominous, The Orphanage rarely betrays the solemnity of its narration. Being a ghost story with a dozen young actors and a séance scene, it has all the chances to get campy at some point, but it's never as funny as, probably, a good half of Sinister -- another movie which doesn't know other colours than grey, green, and white. Heck (Heck is also rather sad than scary, though), even its most visually intense moment is outside the house.
The movie generally has a bit of a paradox in it: it puts enough checkmarks to count as a horror story without being one for a minute and, on a more subjective note, it looks nothing like Spanish art the way it is portrayed in a pop culture. It has no exaltation in it. It says in your face: forget Goya, forget El Greco, forget the sunny Barcelona because here, we enjoy Virginia Woolf and Ingmar Bergman. I mean it: the mother looks incredibly Nordic. I've been thinking about Wyeth's Helga Pictures all the time. (And I've also been thinking about Skyler White and Cersei and Mylène Farmer in Ghostland -- apparently, Laura is just so archetypical that her very image keeps haunting other desperate mothers even in the future.) And the fascination with snow! In this colour scheme, the snow looks just like the sandy beach in the beginning, and if both of these locations are in Spain, then this is how you show love to your homeland.
(Talking about moody games about being Bri'ish; everyone talks about how The Orphanage is similar to Rule of Rose, and it is. But the way The Orphanage seems to be something and never becomes that is very similar to Dear Esther. Is it a game? It is, but you don't shoot monsters because you can't do anything but follow the path and look around and listen to poems. A good story doesn't need motoric stimulation to bring emotions. Well, maybe here you also solve some hidden object puzzle, but not too much. And it's just as random as those screens from the I Spy series, because the solution, in fact, isn't hidden. It's in you. Like Senua, Laura just has to struggle a bit for the revelation to feel more deserved. Like all of these games, The Orphanage uses the surreal logic of the Gothic genre to the fullest.)
Lake Mungo (2008)
Lovely Palmermarink
Strangely, this movie feels in many ways both more haunted and more abstract than even Skinamarink, thanks to which I've learnt about it (and I agree, the inspiration is noticeable, without being a rip-off -- far from it, actually). Was it also scary? No, I mean, I was expecting them to break the rule of ending climactic moments with nothing the way they tended to do... but not that it had really happened. Even the more conventional jump scares here were quite abstract and relatively softcore -- legitimately unsettling, but what are they against the newer Skinamarink or Sinister after all.
The vaguely defined term "abstract horror" had already been applied to Skinamarink in my experience, but even there, the rules of absence and fear of existence itself aren't that prominent. There is an entity, and there is a dark dimension, and there is a very specific predicament for its characters. Here? The location is our mundane existence, and the horror element is practically absent on multiple levels. It's not just that the ghost doesn't have a proper face, but also that the culprit just isn't there, maybe but the life itself, that is, the life of a lonely teenager who just happened to go through unfortunate events.
Some spooky moments notwithstanding, it's not even a proper horror, I dare say. Is Virgin Suicides a horror movie? There are mass deaths, after all. The major difference is vaguely disturbing imagery, which truly makes one question, what exactly is "scary" and what exactly is "a ghost", and if it's a good idea to watch any ghost detective story as a horror movie and if a psychological drama can't just have a bit of spooky moments but be more of a sad than scary story overall.
To get someone involved in Alice's life, she had to give it up, and it's rather beautiful than scary how we stare right into her face at the still shots all the time without seeing anything -- not even sudden jump scares, which, honestly, makes this movie somewhat better than Skinamarink in that it got the feeling of being a ghost better than its successor. It's rather ironic, considering how both movies are about depersonalized storytelling and scary faceless faces but the overall effect is absolutely different. Having no strong emotions imposed onto you but instead making you consciously evoke these emotions by imagining things is what makes Lake Mungo feel somewhat less infernal and impressive but also significantly more contemplative, elevated, and profound because ghosts also only feel ghosts of emotions.
Even the scarier ghost who did have a face, was only truly present for the dead girl herself -- and her story was to become absent. It's like Lovely Bones watched in Skinamarink's house, deprived of a relatively happy ending. Or like Virgin Suicides put in the refrigerator -- and I truly dig the ethereal, indifferent mood. What if two very similar stories were filmed the opposite way? One like a soap ad and another like a tacky documentary. They both master absences and liminality beautifully though, even before everyone became so obsessed with these. I can't believe Lake Mungo is almost 20 years old. But after all, Twin Peaks is even older, and it's also liminal (and I got the reference even before learning the family name, thank you very much, I remember Laura's last footage from the first episodes.).
(No wonder even my favourite urban legends of haunted paintings also work like this, when a blurred or vague face works as a better horror material than the ugliest monster you could imagine, like the Ukrainian Woman of the Rain, or the Japanese Girl's Suicide Drawing (and it turns out its author isn't anonymous anymore! I've only learnt that now, after 12 years of knowing the legend. Writing reviews is educational.))
Suspiria (1977)
It's not a slasher, but a 'slasher'
When they tried to film Pratchett's "Colour of Magic", they just added some purple magical sparkles all over the hatching turtles, but this is the movie which has truly shown me colours, sounds and genders I had no clue existed. This feeling of being disoriented and lost in a hazy Symbolist painting is something Italian directors are good at like nobody else. (Although I seem to have gotten into the whole giallo topic the other, more obscure way -- Conquest (1984) was also this, but fantasy. Found footage from the world of dreams whose inhabitants only speak A2 English. The main difference is that here it's Beardsley and there it was Fernand Khnopff.)
No, but I mean it, even the cast looks stylized as Beardsley's androgynous figures. How's it called when you're having gay panic, but in reverse? Sara was a straight panic for me. My point is; I'm very dissatisfied with how this film isn't in Hisssssssusan Sontag's Notes on Camp. Not even the fact that she wrote them around 10 years before that excuses this for me; she could make a second edition just with the word "Suspiria" in it. It's not a slasher, but a 'slasher'.
Ironically, it's after Sara's clumsily filmed death that the story goes somewhat downhill -- still, nothing's so bad as to make my rating less than "perfect". If not for the messy ending which a slasher should have, the story felt like one of those stories of places, rather than that of separate people. Even as the supposedly main character is introduced, she very quickly becomes a camera that captures the much more interesting world around it. Who are the other girls, what about the guys, what are the little secrets of the teachers? I can never get enough of such intimate stories about things behind closed doors, be it Innocence (2004), The House of Tolerance (2011), or Virgin Suicides. Something like Little Otik is an example of how you tuck in the first-class horror between all the cosily claustrophobic psychology.
But no matter how basic the writing in Suspiria is, its visuals are so lush that I see no point in reducing the rating. In fact, I've checked on the remake of 2018, and I think that the difference between what I've seen in the Google Images tab and this version is very symbolic. (I mean that difference where the only colour the movie is allowed to have these days is fifty shades of blood. Unless it has the word "neon" in it, of course. I'm nauseous at the very thought.)
Sinister (2012)
Satanism and the cardigan
Oh, so this is where Ghostland with Mylène Farmer took its roots? An utterly imperfect non-typical haunted house story about uncomfortably realistic torture scenes, irritating blonde women, creative people putting tragedies to good use and making trouble for their families by being so deranged, campy theatrical mise-en-scènes, and extremely hot parental figures in old clothing, who are best known for their creative work in Paris?
On a more serious note though, I can always appreciate a movie which enjoys belonging to a genre this much. Inspired by horror media, it's a horror media about how influential and infectious horror media is, especially in the modern era -- from satanic panic to the true crime phenomenon (the last one being not just portrayed, but actually predicted by Sinister). Having your typical black metal musician with corpse paint be an ancient demon who's taking neglected children and establishing a children's cult is quite a blunt metaphor, and an overacted one at that.
The result is rather endearing, even though it maybe could either overact even more or stay more serious. As it is now, the experience is just as all over the place, as when you find a tape with "Pool party" written on it and watch a family being drowned. This all is quite impactful, after all -- from genuine discomfort to a nervous giggle when all the zombie kids make The Gesture with Buhuul jumping at the camera, like are they serious? It's so ridiculous it almost seems this was the point, the whole movie imitating those house tapes. And this devotion to the plot devices and the media in general is what's the best about it.
Tron (1982)
The future in the past and the past in the future
It was probably one of the films that made me think about the passage of time and our perception of technology the most. Back then Tron must've been superb, and I understand why for me it was nothing more than ridiculous. I can open my Autodesk Maya and render these environments in an hour, including hard surface and materials, and this writing? It's even beyond basic -- come to think of it, the whole plot and the way it's told is not dissimilar to how we'd retell a session in your average action shooter. "We decided to fight an evil corporation so we tricked the AI into hitting a wall and then we found a boost and also a new tank and then, and then all was well and we kissed a chick". Even back then, they were able to perfectly mimic that, and maybe that was the point as well. But as for me, it just shows how much more engaging such narrative is, when you partake in the story and not just observe it. (I can't tell this many actors apart when the costumes are the same anyway.)
And still, the way the future technologies are portrayed here is so different from what we see as high-tech now. What is the most high-tech movie now? The new Avatar, the new Lion King? It's only about copying the realistic graphics, and the most beloved animated cinema seems to be that which slowly regresses from the 3D tech -- Arcane, the new Puss in Boots, or the new Spider-Man are praised for being inventive with their visuals by incorporating 2D effects drawn over the rendered scenes. Here? As weak as 3D graphics were back then, here, they are celebrated. The authors understood both the potential and the deficiency of the tool -- it can be futuristic, but please, no complex shapes. It's a good thing when the tool is used so consciously and respectfully, because hey, they did try to invent a new thing with it.
(And I like the black-and-white faces of the actors. I think it's rather technological constraints than a conscious artistic choice, but it adds to the whole reflection on the new and the old this movie made me feel. Let's try conjoining classic visuals we've had for a century, and new technologies -- the result might be not perfect, but in the end, it can make for a new classic in its genre.)
The Company of Wolves (1984)
An aristocrat has no shame
Usually, I try to keep my reviews structured, but here? I don't know where to begin.
The beautifully theatrical and artificial set which once again shows how much more important the vision is than the budget? Animals notwithstanding, it almost looks like something you can carry along and construct in a theatre and play the story in any city at any time. Mylène Farmer does exactly that with just slightly less elaborate scenery on her tours -- speaking of Gothic tales of sexual liberation with French vibes... The movie itself is somewhat reminiscent of either a music clip or a concert in this "not everything must be logical if it looks cool" feeling.
Aside from being so precise in capturing the feeling of a dream, it really suits the "told" aspect of the story. Most of the time, what is happening is not what is happening, but rather what is being told -- it's no wonder not everything looks equally natural. There is something about classical tales and their retellings looking like theatre pieces even when produced for screens: Kwaidan works the same way, and Kwaidan is 11/10.
The "both-gendered" tale of growing up? Usually, all retellings of Little Red Riding Hood, from Hard Candy to The Path (2009) (it's a game but it's so experimental you can count it as a film -- you don't do much gamey stuff there anyway) tend to focus on the feminine story of growing up and coping with the cruelty of men, but here, a lot of male angst is shown as well -- growing up afflicts both body and temperament, makes a boy look rather like an animal than a sweet child he used to be before. With how sympathetic this movie is to teenagers of both sexes and how it encourages us to see the inevitable as the process of liberation rather than brutalization, I only wonder why all Bloodborne fans and furries in the world go only to cheesy Van Helsing and leave this treasure behind when they could have both.
The lush aristocrats of the 18th century? It's not that Brotherhood of the Wolf, another tale of noble beasts and spoiled aristocrats, was already a thing for some cultural association between aristocrats and werewolves in cinema to form, but still, I find the idea of a wolf from high society very fitting -- especially in the Enlightenment. An aristocrat has no shame, for shame is a bourgeois feeling, and considering the whole libertine culture, it's no wonder that an aristocrat will be the one to show a young ingenue the new ways. The one who knows how to stay perfectly civilized and charming without losing touch with his animalistic side for a minute.
Giorgino (1994)
"The Fiery Angel", painted with coffee
The movie feels like it was made before its time. A contemplative, artsy, indecently long, paradoxical gothic meta-horror that reflects on the genre and its interaction with other genres. Because you might think: okay, black horses? Check. A decrepit church full of morbid symbolism? Check. A creepy village? Check. Ghosts of wolves? Check. A pale and bleeding handmaid? Check. A Romantic protagonist, ready for anything, going through inhumane suffering? Check. An offbeat womanchild of a heroine? (Should France have its own Fair Folk, I bet she, just like Machen's little girl, would've been obsessed with them, and just like her, Catherine would've died at the end because of them.) Check. Youth, saving itself from the religious zealotry? Check! (This was the first reason why I remembered Victor Hugo here, and the second is the movie being very reserved with colours. I know it's for the historical gloomy atmosphere, but I remembered that he loved to draw Romantic landscapes with charcoal and paint them with coffee, and they, too, have all shades of sepia in them.) But what you've eventually watched is much more like a story about a historical time period and the ethics of medicine. At some point, you might probably think that it could've easily been an indie horror from one of the newer decades - long and socially relevant, only Giorgino is by far not as humble with a budget and thus, probably, feels somewhat dissonant. It's almost as if this film, juggling Gothic tropes and showing them off one after another like songs performed at a concert (no wonder it's a film from three prominent musical figures), didn't wait for the theoreticians to become obsessed with all kinds of horror just a bit and appeared decades before the term "elevated horror" was even coined.
Funnily, nowadays its main subjects, such as femininity, mental health or a glum folk revision of religion, are the core pillars of almost any prominent horror title (just as the very method of filming a horror movie the way it basically becomes a social story with esoteric decorations). The movie is actually quite successful at binding all of its topics together and rhyming them with each other. You'd guess this is how an isolated village of First World War Europe would look and feel, with women taking control and justice into their own hands, putting away the traditional, subdued role both in the plot and the narrative. It's almost always the guys who are shown vulnerable, sick, and weakened; it's an old crippled priest who becomes the young doctor's connoisseur and someone to share candies with, that the dead children didn't get, it's the master of the old manor who loses his mind and barely comprehends what is happening around him.
The men's wing of the madhouse is probably the scariest part of this supposedly supernatural Gothic movie, not least due to the absurd, tragicomical chaos of war. In fact, even before Giorgino, Boris Vian and The King in Yellow made me think it's something about the French culture to find social collapse simultaneously horrendous and hilarious. Even the main story sometimes looks quite ridiculous - the riot of a disturbed girl and a retired soldier on his last legs against the tired women, embittered by winter and anxious loneliness. It is still tragic all right, though, and the global nature of the movie makes this tragedy of a girl unfit for these tough times even more touching. In fact, her fate echoes for me the novel "The Fiery Angel" written by Russian author Valeriy Bryusov shortly before the Russian Revolution. It is about a young woman in a wrong time period (whose name, surprisingly, isn't Tristana but instead just Renata) whose madness brings her into the dungeons of a German Inquisition of the XVI century and... and I won't tell you whether her beloved soldier comes in time to rescue her or not. This question is answered in the book.
Like Mylène's heroine here, Renata was a special, rare, Ophelia the maneater. Even drowning in scraps of lyrics, she drove men crazy, and there was little good waiting for all of them. Although, despite starting Giorgino mainly because of her, here, unlike in Ghostland, I didn't only feel invested when she was on screen, and that's another good sign. Funnily, it's Ghostland, a trans-insensitive exploit horror, that looks much older than its time although it plays with the tropes of horror just as consciously and no less enthusiastically than Giorgino, and is equally hard to criticise and evaluate properly - because what can you do with a chameleon movie changing its genre on the way, right?
The Virgin Suicides (1999)
Suburban Gothic, blinded by the sun
Suicidal white-fenced American Gothic about morality murdering youth in its own house married to dreamy, all Wallflower, retro adolescence. These sunny sparkling lens do make all wallpaper on the screen yellow, after all.
From the vague preliminary information I've had I figured I was about to watch something rather grotesque + scandalous + repressed, worthy of Virginia Andrews, Joyce Carol Oates or Gillian Flynn, but the movie kinda takes the haunted and then paints these golden transluscent watercolors all over it. It relishes in peace and sweetness, sacrificing at times any possible tension just to stay serenely idle just for a little while -- it's as if the film tries to capture emptiness itself (and does it eventually quite literally when we see the Lisbons' house staying completely empty) by keeping these long, a bit awkward interactions between younger and older people which look so natural it gets uncomfortable: usually it's not something that makes it to the film since you'd think conversations shown should move the plot or contain any drama in it, yet there's a plenty of these looong shots with teenagers mumbling to each other: "Hello, do you want some juice? Goodbye". And this totally works, even though it makes the second part far too short -- traumatic is downplayed, light-hearted is celebrated, pretty much what this all is about.
The same trick is made to the girls themselves. No surprise I smelled the Gothic from so far beyond. They are full-fledged ghosts, if born of the sun. Desubjectivized by both their parents and the neighbour boys, reducted to, as another reviewer remarked, a soap ad and compared to deadly poison, corroding both spaces and futures. Noticeably, corroding even the masculinity itself. Living others' lives, collecting gossips and obsessing over the neighbous, hypocritically seducing the opposite sex and breaking their lives -- all of these negative stereotypes are applied to all men who dare approach the sunny sisters and who are being laughed at and punished by women even from beyond the graves: from the voyeur boys to their spineless father, lost in his own dusty school classroom (speaking of classrooms: having "Spring's Awakening" by Frank Wedekind on their literature classes, German high schoolers will inevitably have to analyze the symbolism of chokingly dusty classrooms inhabited by the coming of age students, having no one to explain the phenomena of puberty to them. There, too, everyone dies in the end).
"The Virgin Suicides" mocks the voyerism itself even in the denouement, hiding all the interesting stuff right after having us observe as well as nothing the majority of its time. You couldn't not have noticed the increasing obsession over the true crime content. Detective media and true crime investigations are meticulous with all kind of data: who died at what exact time, what was the exact location, what premises were for it to happen, starting with the culprit's childhood? All we see here are some legs for a couple of minutes and a gang of confused young people knowing the trajectory of their life has changed forever. Some of the girls are almost completely concealed by the story, not leaving us a chance to know their little secrets.
...Still, I would've taken out a star. Just out of my personal disdain for "The Perks of Being a Wallflower". Indeed, the only two interesting things teenagers can do are dying and growing up. I know adolescence is the subject here, but the pacing is way too uneven and the most vacuous part is way too long. Just a bit more spookiness throughout the story would do the trick.
Ghostland (2018)
Mylène this, Mylène that, oh yeah about the movie... (but mostly Mylène)
The title had been somewhat confusing only until the dramatic revealing of an absolutely unrelated horror genre took place right in the story. This is how the whole movie is -- about wild, emotionally charged phantasies following each other. "Je suis caméléon". So much Lovecraft right off the bat, together with the title, makes us suggest we're going to explore some supernatural horror; and then, Mylène the eccentric manor mommy kinda gave off some Sharp Objects, and I was actually so damn up for her being the bad guy, but eventually, it's neither Lovecraft (he actually has spectacularly little to do with this genre of horror but as Vera says, a reality check is also needed sometimes) nor Sharp Objects. Instead, it's Mylène's own Mulholland Drive (oh, or maybe it's also Misery with Mylène a wee bit since its cloud cockoolander protagonist does eventually smash a psycho brute's head with a typewriter).
It's only logical such a story will be so playful with all kinds of horrors and the most pervasive tropes ever -- let's be frank, we've seen it all. But maybe it was this very recognizable, over-the-top kitschy backdrop that was especially good at highlighting the unexpectedly naturalistic portrayal of violence and all kinds of human suffering instead of delivering us a witty or overtly philosophical setting to savour meanwhile. While the main hero is only learning how to push these buttons and be effective at creeping out the audience, the film knows it and shows the whole glossary of disturbing media both to us and to her. Being exposed to the very much real and definitely not cosmic horrors, the heroine uses every chance to hide in imaginary Mylène's cosy lap for just a bit... and consider recycling her trauma into a hypothetical bestseller. Due to this paradox of observing real and unreal, our own and someone else's, we do get our thrills from observing fictional violence, and we happily consume it, but when told in certain ways, the story might become too real -- and we feel uncomfortable; rather voyeurists than viewers. And the very same story, instead of becoming a bestseller (as Beth had in mind), gets known as insensitive torture porn. Although do victims in horror media, those haunted in ghost stories, or butchered in tacky slashers, like piles of mannequins, feel comfortable in their horrors? Did those about whom we get our true crime media feel comfortable? (Did the actress who injured herself during the shooting feel comfortable? While having fun, we shouldn't forget those whose suffering has entertained us.) Having inherited its subject of unwanted witnessing from the New French Extremity (and, honestly, being inventive rather with presentation than content), Ghostland aims for the definition of grotesque -- something so contrived it suddenly makes you feel so true it's no more delightful. Having fun is alright, but sometimes we might as well feel empathetic and vulnerable when least expected.
(And in fact, this all is very Mylène (on her way from a flirtatious sex icon into a quirky loving mum) -- not just thanks to its theatrical, hyperbolically Gothic and gory visuals (or to the big dogs out of nothing here and there), but also to her heroine dying in the process, so I can totally see how we ended up here. Actually, now I also wonder whether the directors of "Raillumer les etoiles" had this film in mind cause it's absolutely just about the girls' mother taking a voyage to the Ghost Land manor from heaven to remember places of military glory.)
Time Bandits (1981)
A feverish dream of a kid's fantasy film. Not in a good way.
Of all the old fantasy films I watched, this has easily got to be the most disturbing, chaotic and dissatisfying.
Look, I'm not against (black) comedy or rugged visuals but a fantasy film so grayish, depressing and hopelessly absurd? Well, at the very least it's Definitely not for kids. Again, I'm not against a story about a kid being dragged away by magical tricksters of dubious morals and going through so much together that they eventually get attached to each other, but having a 2 hours long movie about a lonely child desperately wishing to get back home to his cartoonishly nonchalant parents, being dragged along throughout the worlds inhabited solely by cold, one-dimensional individuals (some of whom wear decomposed animals' heads for helmets), attaining and losing the only good parental figure and then losing even said parents? This is far from any idea of a good fairy tale I could conceive if we're talking about kids, this is barely built-together as a story with a thorough and continuous plot if we think what an adult might appreciate this movie for (apart from it being from Monty Python's members and featuring certain cult actors; I know nobody from there and don't follow these things), and as a family film, it is unnecessarily (and unexpectedly) mean and cynical, barely providing potential for any discussion and just generally looking inappropriately smug for something that's being positioned as a family movie. I wouldn't have trouble with that otherwise; modernist literature deserves to be put on screen as well, but maybe it's a bit early for the younger viewers to be promoted a film about a small boy ending up standing to two embers left of his parents, isn't it? No matter the director's "trademark"; in this case, he could make a film about adult protagonists and target the proper audience. And yes, an entertaining movie fit for kids can be both clever and instructive, and it's almost as if Time Bandits targeted for both, but eventually it's just unclear which audience it's really for. Apparently, Monty Python's fans? Because if the film tried to make me feel adventurous and excited in the end... well, few films failed worse.
And it's not just the story; the pacing and the overall narrative, although they do sometimes feel just like a good picaresque fairy tale should, most of the time are so buffoonish they are more like a fever dream. I, for one, would be very overwhelmed and disappointed should I have watched that as a kid and confused should I have discussed it with my kid after its end. No comparison to really good fantasy classics such as The Princess Bride or The Dark Crystal or Willow or, God forbid, Labyrinth whatsoever.
Well, I guess, not even the golden age of fantasy can only be unreservedly good, can it? Also, it's really poorly shot. So done with those low FOV shots, ugh. Where's the perspective? Apparently, just as this poor little boy, this camera has none.