Bottle Rocket is the first film by Wes Anderson. He has come a long way since. Bottle Rocket has none of the signature charm or visual style that came later. The obsessive symmetry is not noticeable here. But the film does serve to show how Anderson has evolved as a writer/director. It does have dysfunctional characters putting themselves into wild situations (or not so wild).
The film opens with Dignan (Wilson) breaking Anthony (Wilson) out of a mental hospital. A volunteer mental hospital where the patients are free to leave. The two then pull off a burglary. A burglary of Anthony’s own house. They are the masterminds of unnecessary crime.
Though it isn’t all for nothing. The two characters are building up to the big-time. It is all for practice, and all to impress a local crime organisation. The middle third of the film becomes a little confused. The character’s go on the run after pulling off a local library heist. The film slacks into a romance. Like most of the film’s internal crimes, it is unnecessary. It meanders, but comes together again for the end.
With such a low budget, everything rides on the script. Everything rides on the performances of the Wilson brothers. It rides on dialogue. Bottle Rocket is a great low-budget first film. But it pales in comparison to everything Anderson did after.
It’s finally time to talk about Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin. A science-fiction road trip through Scotland. Told from the perspective of an alien in the skin of a human woman. Laura is a predator, driving a white van around the streets of Scotland. She seduces men by showing only the vaguest interest in them. In return they follow her into a dark nightmare.
Science-fiction. But Under the Skin is a film about real people.
It all hinges first on the girl. Laura. Scarlett Johansson. A Hollywood face in disguise, dropped into the realms of Scottish civilisation. Filmed with hidden cameras. Interacting with real people. True reactions.
Even the opening sequence reflects the dual nature of the film. In the context of the story, we hear Laura practicing her dialogue. She makes vowel sounds and practices the way words form in her mouth. But this is actually a recording of Johansson practicing her dialect for the role. It’s a clever idea, reflecting the nature of the film as a form of method acting.
The first half of the film is sparse of exposition. We follow Laura on her road trip, in her interactions, ensnaring men. She lures them back to a derelict house. Inside is only a dark abyss; a haunting abstract plane. The men descend into this darkness. Willing to do so as they are so captivated by this siren. And something invisible in the darkness pulls the meat from under their skin. Leaving only a hollow shell behind.
The film indulges itself in letting this half of the film play out in slow pace. It is slow because we have to witness the length of time that Laura allows humanity to impact upon her. She is not human. This is never more clear than a particular beach scene. It is a gut-wrenching emotional play that she witnesses, and is completely indifferent to. But over time, the effects of humanity do seep in under the skin. There is no galvanising moment of realisation. It is a slow process.
Yet there is a galvanising moment that shifts the focus of the film. We find a narrative in the second half. As Laura finds a twinkling of humanity, the perspective turns. She experiences the world not from the perspective of a predator, but as the prey. She finds herself in an unfamiliar abyss (a deep forest). She experiences the dark, predatory nature of the human in the film’s climax.
Under the Skin is bold. It is clever. It is beautiful. It provokes thought. It pulls the viewer out of their comfort zone. Jonathan Glazer has made a film that realises his cinematic vision. A guerrilla documentary on the nature of people. The cinematography and soundtrack are haunting. And Scarlett Johansson is ethereal as Laura.
When Taika Waititi and frequent collaborator Jermaine Clement released the film Eagle vs Shark, they struck out into the world with a comedy charm that was subtle, refreshing and completely unlike the saturated Hollywood fare.
Taika’s style is that of heart and deadpan comedy. A tragic-sweetness that carries from Eagle vs Shark to What We Do in the Shadows. The premise of the film is a novelty. Four vampire house-mates and a documentary film crew. We follow these characters in the run-up to the undead social event of the year. The Unholy Masquerade.
Each of the vampires is representative of a specific time in vampire history. Viago is the classic, Bela Lugosi’s Dracula of the group. Vladislav sits more in the style of Bram Stoker. Deacon is evocative of the 80’s Lost Boys. And Petyr is the silent (a nice throwback to the films that birthed his character) Nosferatu. Later they add Nick to the group, a contemporary vampire who walks through the city streets shouting “I am Twilight!”
The comedy is punchy and sharp. On the subject of why vampires prefer to drink the blood of virgins, Vladislav says “Think of it like this. If you are going to eat a sandwich, you would just enjoy it more if you knew no one had fucked it.” All these subtle plays on the nature of being a vampire in the real world build into a funny film. To repeat them en masse here would diminish their potency.
What We Do in the Shadows is a film that is worth a watch. Maybe even a re-watch. Especially for those who are fans of the collaborators previous works (Flight of the Conchords!).
Killing Them Softly is a film that showed brief (emphasis on brief) moments of being something greater than it was. If it had a braver editor. It’s not a long film, clocking in at 97 minutes. But so much of that was aimless, meandering dialogue that should be dead on the cutting room floor.
When the film does hit, it hits hard. There are some powerful visual scenes. A brutal beating in a rainy car park. A drive-by execution. A drifting, kaleidoscopic heroin interrogation. But these are the gems in a rough of film that is unsure about what it is, and what it wants to be.
In the end it’s hard to feel like the film is not trying to cash in on your nostalgia for the better performances of it’s actors. Pitt, Liotta, Gandolfini. It’s a patchwork, cut together from pieces of crime films past. Hard to feel like you haven’t seen the film before in it’s contemporaries. Reminiscent of other modern crime films; Revolver (Another Liotta piece) or Lucky Number Slevin. But they are smarter and braver and have a more cohesive style.
Killing Them Softly is a film unsure of itself. And it’s noticeable.
This begins a Terence Malick love affair that will stretch for decades.
Badlands is a film of strange personal morality. A beautiful road movie through the waste of America, following the killing spree of two drifting souls. Holly and Kit are creatures of vague motivation. Bored of the tedium of civilisation they break out into the wilderness in a violent spiral towards death. Framed in the macro-beauty of nature.
For Holly it is unclear why she is so willing to follow Kit down this path of self-destruction. This is no Mickey and Mallory relationship. It becomes clear these characters hold no true love for each other. Only an interest (or fascination?). But for Kit it is about forging an element of fame or iconography of himself. He leaves a constant trail of ‘himself’ as they go. A trail of his morality, recording messages to tape for potential child fans who look up to him as an idol. “Listen to your parents and teachers. They got a line on most things, so don’t treat em like enemies.” he says. This whole ordeal is a quest to find importance. To impart a mark on the world.
Kit punctuates each action with strange justification and reasoning that Holly accepts. She doesn’t question him, but doesn’t understand him either. The two blaze out into this personal heaven, knowing that it is all temporary. Knowing and preparing for the explosive end.
Malick as a director has a way of splashing human brutality onto the frame of nature. A film about killing where the takeaway imagery is an aching, fading sun through grass and leaves. Badlands marks the beginning of Malickian cinematography. Film-makers have imitated and emulated this aesthetic style (but never as well) to an extent where it has become pastiche. But it began here.
This is a beautiful film about brutal, disconnected people.
How has a film about a sex-ghost been so well received?
The premise of It Follows sounds so… dumb. It’s a premise built on dream logic. To put it in words is selling it short. A film about a relentless walking ghost, slow, but persistent, always walking. Wherever you go, it follows. You can’t kill it, and running only buys you some time to breathe. It is always in pursuit. And when it catches you, you die.
The only way to end the nightmare is to pass it on to someone else like an STD, through sex. Get some strange and it’s their problem now.
It’s hard not to find an allegorical message about coming-of-age teens and the long-term consequences of rampant fucking. In reality though, this is not an important part of the film. What is important is creeping you the fuck out.
There are no cheap shocks in It Follows. Ominous dread builds through long, drawn out camera work and the knowledge that somewhere out there, ‘it’ is following. There are no surprises because all the while you know what is coming. And that is the most terrifying.
There is a scene where the main character jumps in a car and drives with her friends to the coast for respite. The audience gets a brief glimpse of normality. Then, while the main character relaxes on a deck chair, on a beach with her friends, we see it. It emerges from the bushes behind her, slow moving, we see it coming. For so long you see it coming. The tension is in your desperate want for the character to turn around and see it too.
There is a cinematic quality to the film that is reminiscent of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive. Part of the credit for this goes to the soft-haunt-neon-synth ambient soundtrack, but the rest of the credit must go to cinematographer Mike Gioulakis.
It Follows is about as perfect a horror film as there is. And that’s because it is subtle, and it indulges itself the time to pull you in. Because it cares about you as a viewer. It doesn't want you to shock you. It wants to terrify you.
Inherent Vice is a film that drops you in at the deep end. It pulls you into a sudden, twisted haze of neon confusion. Everything is happening around you whether you keep up or not. Whether you remember it or not. Whether it is important or not.
The film invites you, the viewer, to share in the confusion with the protagonist, Doc. If you let it wash over you, the film is an easy watch in a world that is cool and inviting. If you let the confusion consume you then the film is a headache that will push and pull at your brain until you can’t take it any more.
It is an easy watch, but not an easy story, because the puzzle is too complex. The puzzle contains parts that we can’t see, and in some sense Doc himself is a part of the puzzle that he is trying to figure out. Character’s enter the scene to drop clues and muddy the waters, then disappear again. We can’t tell if the information they give is help or harm, or even true. One character states the Golden Fang is a boat, another states the Golden Fang is a triad, another states the Golden Fang is a conglomerate of dentists. It all builds into this confused mess of frustration that we experience alongside Doc. And this is okay. This is the point of the film. It helps if you know this going into it.
Paul Thomas Anderson has developed a reputation for making bold films. And he makes them in an uncompromising way that can’t resonate with all viewers. This has split the critical response to Inherent Vice like hippies and squares.
Like many (all) PTA films it is a film that opens up like a flower with repeat viewing. It is a film about mood and it takes a viewing just to soak up the cinematography. But in all honesty, the story falls into place in the end.
Part of the criticism and acclaim of Elephant is it’s total lack of any kind of morality. It portrays a neutral view of a horrific event. The film takes a camera and puts you, the viewer, inside of something brutal.
But there is a message in there somewhere, hidden in the labyrinthine high-school corridors. The message is in the total lack of care or presence of any adult figure. They are all vacant. All absent.
In the opening scene, John’s father is drifting drunk. This is the extent of his character. The principal of the school is patronising and unconcerned with reason. He looks down on John and is completely without care for his frustrations. The parent’s of the two killers are faceless ghosts that float around the screen and then disappear into the ether. Never seen again.
The strange thing about the film though, is how emotionless everyone seems. There is a scene in which three girls are sitting in the lunch hall, eating, conversing. Then they walk together, they talk, and like any other day they enter the bathroom together to force up their lunch. It seems ordinary. Where a character does display emotion, John retreats to an empty classroom to shed a tear. His friend asks “Did something bad happen?” and he responds “I don’t know.” There is a scene in amongst the chaos of the end where a fearless student (Benny) seems completely unconcerned by what is happening. He drifts through the burning, smoking hallways in a long continuous take. He helps a girl escape and for a moment we almost have a heroic figure. He finds himself sneaking up behind one of the shooters. Yet as quick as this brief glimpse of hope appeared, the shooter turns around and plugs a bullet right into him.
The film’s end is equal in how abrupt it is. A mere snapshot of an event. A portrait of these character’s life and frustrations. It ends with no conclusion or resolution. That is your responsibility as the viewer to come to.
Suspiria is an oppressive blend of light, colour, shape and sound. It is an atmosphere that doesn’t let you breathe until the film closes. In the moments where it could slip into the realm of cheap B-Movie horror, it instead becomes art.
It isn’t the strength of the actors or the plot that will keep you gripped to the screen. The plot is absurd fantasy, as contrived as you would expect from a horror film. There is only a certain amount of willingness to believe in the absurd. Which is why the best horror is the best storytelling. It invests you so deep in something bizarre.
Suspiria instead has something else. It has a style unlike anything you have seen before or since. The lighting and set design is unreal; it is bursting. The set pieces are vast, jagged, cutting modern gothic. The soundtrack is a sour wash of melody that is overwhelming in the film’s quietest moments.
The thing about the film’s plot, though. It could let the film down. The acting could let the film down. Some dated blood effects could let the film down. But it’s hard to give the film a hard time about those things when they seem so small in the film’s grand scale.
My empathy for Llewyn Davis was perhaps a little bit close to home. The film left me feeling profoundly sad about my own life and my own frustrating creative failures. This is what gripped me to the film more than anything and kept me invested in this character. All I wanted out of the film was for him to succeed, because in my mind that meant that I could succeed too.
It nearly was, sure. But in the end it spoiled itself and in a format and genre that is built on making you invest in contrived situations, that is not forgivable.
Coming to this from a list titled '1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die' I was really expecting something groundbreaking to the horror genre and it just wasn't there. The Blair Witch did the found footage thing eight years beforehand, the film itself was relatively boring and ultimately just builds up to one jump scare. There is nothing particularly interesting about the characters or their relationship. Why is this film on the list?
Then I came here and read Dolwphin's comment:
quote:
Executive producer of this film was Steven Schneider; the same man who is the editor of 1001 Movies You Must Se Before You Die. It is just a coincidence though; I'm sure this film is really good!
What a beautiful film, so well designed and pieced together. So ahead of its time. Méliès was the master.
Yes, it looks a little dumb now, a lot dated. The plot is nothing more than a string of absurdities that happen. There are no real characters; just people that move across the screen and make motions. But this was one of the first moving paintings and it looks hell of cool and looking back on it can really make a person think about the evolution of cinema.
Something lynchian happens in the middle of this film, bookended by absolute averageness. The beginning of the film is so 'of its time' and so like any other emerging cinema experimentation you could shrug it off for any of the hundred others.
Then something absolutely absurd happens. The film warps into a dreamlike scene that drums anxiety. It's hypnotizing, and then it ends.
And you are back to the mundane film that you started watching. That ends like any other mundane film of its time.
Watch the first four minutes through a pair of sunglasses.
This film makes a pretty stark commentary on repetitive news media and television; or maybe that interpretation is just a reflection of the time I live in. It actually shows very little, but it hammers a synchronized sound and film footage clip show at you so repetitively it becomes mesmerizing...
It's not really a documentary, and it feels like the film is not so much about the assassination of JFK but is really just trying to evoke an emotion about media in general. At least, that's my take on it.
It's nice to be able to say that a film really made you 'feel' something on an emotional level. Less nice to say that those emotions were 'confusion', 'boredom' even 'frustration'.
All conventional narrative disappears in Meshes of the Afternoon and we are left in a world of unreal dream logic. This 'idea' has been done so well in films that came long after this one. The inspiration that David Lynch must have taken from this film is dripping from everything he ever made.
Still, there is only so much fun in digging to understand the narrative before it becomes hard work.
For such a short film it takes a really long time to start feeling like there is any substance to it. The soundtrack feels oppressive at times, as chaotic as the clip show that is being blasted into your brain. There is not really any character or dialogue, just a mash of icons and symbols cutting into each other and combining to create meaning from their warped, amalgam form.
A clip of Scorpio preaching cuts to a clip of Jesus preaching, cuts to a clip of Hitler preaching. It cuts and cuts and layers until all the imagery and meaning becomes overwhelming.
But, ultimately, who cares?
Well let's not give the film no credit; there is about fifty years worth of films that took inspiration from the films that took inspiration from Scorpio Rising and boy do we have to be thankful of that. At the end of the day however, trying to watch the film as an empty conduit, trying to absorb it without any prior knowledge or bias about the importance of the film, it just felt... weird.
Comments 1 - 18 of 18
Movie comment on Bottle Rocket
sixteenmiles
https://16miles.wordpress.com/2015/05/27/bottle-rocket-1996/Bottle Rocket is the first film by Wes Anderson. He has come a long way since. Bottle Rocket has none of the signature charm or visual style that came later. The obsessive symmetry is not noticeable here. But the film does serve to show how Anderson has evolved as a writer/director. It does have dysfunctional characters putting themselves into wild situations (or not so wild).
The film opens with Dignan (Wilson) breaking Anthony (Wilson) out of a mental hospital. A volunteer mental hospital where the patients are free to leave. The two then pull off a burglary. A burglary of Anthony’s own house. They are the masterminds of unnecessary crime.
Though it isn’t all for nothing. The two characters are building up to the big-time. It is all for practice, and all to impress a local crime organisation. The middle third of the film becomes a little confused. The character’s go on the run after pulling off a local library heist. The film slacks into a romance. Like most of the film’s internal crimes, it is unnecessary. It meanders, but comes together again for the end.
With such a low budget, everything rides on the script. Everything rides on the performances of the Wilson brothers. It rides on dialogue. Bottle Rocket is a great low-budget first film. But it pales in comparison to everything Anderson did after.
Movie comment on Under the Skin
sixteenmiles
https://16miles.wordpress.com/2015/05/21/under-the-skin-2013/It’s finally time to talk about Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin. A science-fiction road trip through Scotland. Told from the perspective of an alien in the skin of a human woman. Laura is a predator, driving a white van around the streets of Scotland. She seduces men by showing only the vaguest interest in them. In return they follow her into a dark nightmare.
Science-fiction. But Under the Skin is a film about real people.
It all hinges first on the girl. Laura. Scarlett Johansson. A Hollywood face in disguise, dropped into the realms of Scottish civilisation. Filmed with hidden cameras. Interacting with real people. True reactions.
Even the opening sequence reflects the dual nature of the film. In the context of the story, we hear Laura practicing her dialogue. She makes vowel sounds and practices the way words form in her mouth. But this is actually a recording of Johansson practicing her dialect for the role. It’s a clever idea, reflecting the nature of the film as a form of method acting.
The first half of the film is sparse of exposition. We follow Laura on her road trip, in her interactions, ensnaring men. She lures them back to a derelict house. Inside is only a dark abyss; a haunting abstract plane. The men descend into this darkness. Willing to do so as they are so captivated by this siren. And something invisible in the darkness pulls the meat from under their skin. Leaving only a hollow shell behind.
The film indulges itself in letting this half of the film play out in slow pace. It is slow because we have to witness the length of time that Laura allows humanity to impact upon her. She is not human. This is never more clear than a particular beach scene. It is a gut-wrenching emotional play that she witnesses, and is completely indifferent to. But over time, the effects of humanity do seep in under the skin. There is no galvanising moment of realisation. It is a slow process.
Yet there is a galvanising moment that shifts the focus of the film. We find a narrative in the second half. As Laura finds a twinkling of humanity, the perspective turns. She experiences the world not from the perspective of a predator, but as the prey. She finds herself in an unfamiliar abyss (a deep forest). She experiences the dark, predatory nature of the human in the film’s climax.
Under the Skin is bold. It is clever. It is beautiful. It provokes thought. It pulls the viewer out of their comfort zone. Jonathan Glazer has made a film that realises his cinematic vision. A guerrilla documentary on the nature of people. The cinematography and soundtrack are haunting. And Scarlett Johansson is ethereal as Laura.
Five.
Movie comment on What We Do in the Shadows
sixteenmiles
https://16miles.wordpress.com/2015/05/20/what-we-do-in-the-shadows-2014/When Taika Waititi and frequent collaborator Jermaine Clement released the film Eagle vs Shark, they struck out into the world with a comedy charm that was subtle, refreshing and completely unlike the saturated Hollywood fare.
Taika’s style is that of heart and deadpan comedy. A tragic-sweetness that carries from Eagle vs Shark to What We Do in the Shadows. The premise of the film is a novelty. Four vampire house-mates and a documentary film crew. We follow these characters in the run-up to the undead social event of the year. The Unholy Masquerade.
Each of the vampires is representative of a specific time in vampire history. Viago is the classic, Bela Lugosi’s Dracula of the group. Vladislav sits more in the style of Bram Stoker. Deacon is evocative of the 80’s Lost Boys. And Petyr is the silent (a nice throwback to the films that birthed his character) Nosferatu. Later they add Nick to the group, a contemporary vampire who walks through the city streets shouting “I am Twilight!”
The comedy is punchy and sharp. On the subject of why vampires prefer to drink the blood of virgins, Vladislav says “Think of it like this. If you are going to eat a sandwich, you would just enjoy it more if you knew no one had fucked it.” All these subtle plays on the nature of being a vampire in the real world build into a funny film. To repeat them en masse here would diminish their potency.
What We Do in the Shadows is a film that is worth a watch. Maybe even a re-watch. Especially for those who are fans of the collaborators previous works (Flight of the Conchords!).
Movie comment on Killing Them Softly
sixteenmiles
https://16miles.wordpress.com/2015/05/20/killing-them-softly-2012/Killing Them Softly is a film that showed brief (emphasis on brief) moments of being something greater than it was. If it had a braver editor. It’s not a long film, clocking in at 97 minutes. But so much of that was aimless, meandering dialogue that should be dead on the cutting room floor.
When the film does hit, it hits hard. There are some powerful visual scenes. A brutal beating in a rainy car park. A drive-by execution. A drifting, kaleidoscopic heroin interrogation. But these are the gems in a rough of film that is unsure about what it is, and what it wants to be.
In the end it’s hard to feel like the film is not trying to cash in on your nostalgia for the better performances of it’s actors. Pitt, Liotta, Gandolfini. It’s a patchwork, cut together from pieces of crime films past. Hard to feel like you haven’t seen the film before in it’s contemporaries. Reminiscent of other modern crime films; Revolver (Another Liotta piece) or Lucky Number Slevin. But they are smarter and braver and have a more cohesive style.
Killing Them Softly is a film unsure of itself. And it’s noticeable.
Movie comment on Badlands
sixteenmiles
Some thoughts on Badlands: https://16miles.wordpress.com/2015/05/19/badlands-1973/This begins a Terence Malick love affair that will stretch for decades.
Badlands is a film of strange personal morality. A beautiful road movie through the waste of America, following the killing spree of two drifting souls. Holly and Kit are creatures of vague motivation. Bored of the tedium of civilisation they break out into the wilderness in a violent spiral towards death. Framed in the macro-beauty of nature.
For Holly it is unclear why she is so willing to follow Kit down this path of self-destruction. This is no Mickey and Mallory relationship. It becomes clear these characters hold no true love for each other. Only an interest (or fascination?). But for Kit it is about forging an element of fame or iconography of himself. He leaves a constant trail of ‘himself’ as they go. A trail of his morality, recording messages to tape for potential child fans who look up to him as an idol. “Listen to your parents and teachers. They got a line on most things, so don’t treat em like enemies.” he says. This whole ordeal is a quest to find importance. To impart a mark on the world.
Kit punctuates each action with strange justification and reasoning that Holly accepts. She doesn’t question him, but doesn’t understand him either. The two blaze out into this personal heaven, knowing that it is all temporary. Knowing and preparing for the explosive end.
Malick as a director has a way of splashing human brutality onto the frame of nature. A film about killing where the takeaway imagery is an aching, fading sun through grass and leaves. Badlands marks the beginning of Malickian cinematography. Film-makers have imitated and emulated this aesthetic style (but never as well) to an extent where it has become pastiche. But it began here.
This is a beautiful film about brutal, disconnected people.
Movie comment on It Follows
sixteenmiles
Some thoughts on It Follows: https://16miles.wordpress.com/2015/05/19/it-follows-2014/How has a film about a sex-ghost been so well received?
The premise of It Follows sounds so… dumb. It’s a premise built on dream logic. To put it in words is selling it short. A film about a relentless walking ghost, slow, but persistent, always walking. Wherever you go, it follows. You can’t kill it, and running only buys you some time to breathe. It is always in pursuit. And when it catches you, you die.
The only way to end the nightmare is to pass it on to someone else like an STD, through sex. Get some strange and it’s their problem now.
It’s hard not to find an allegorical message about coming-of-age teens and the long-term consequences of rampant fucking. In reality though, this is not an important part of the film. What is important is creeping you the fuck out.
There are no cheap shocks in It Follows. Ominous dread builds through long, drawn out camera work and the knowledge that somewhere out there, ‘it’ is following. There are no surprises because all the while you know what is coming. And that is the most terrifying.
There is a scene where the main character jumps in a car and drives with her friends to the coast for respite. The audience gets a brief glimpse of normality. Then, while the main character relaxes on a deck chair, on a beach with her friends, we see it. It emerges from the bushes behind her, slow moving, we see it coming. For so long you see it coming. The tension is in your desperate want for the character to turn around and see it too.
There is a cinematic quality to the film that is reminiscent of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive. Part of the credit for this goes to the soft-haunt-neon-synth ambient soundtrack, but the rest of the credit must go to cinematographer Mike Gioulakis.
It Follows is about as perfect a horror film as there is. And that’s because it is subtle, and it indulges itself the time to pull you in. Because it cares about you as a viewer. It doesn't want you to shock you. It wants to terrify you.
Movie comment on Inherent Vice
sixteenmiles
Some thoughts on Inherent Vice: https://16miles.wordpress.com/2015/05/18/inherent-vice-2014/Inherent Vice is a film that drops you in at the deep end. It pulls you into a sudden, twisted haze of neon confusion. Everything is happening around you whether you keep up or not. Whether you remember it or not. Whether it is important or not.
The film invites you, the viewer, to share in the confusion with the protagonist, Doc. If you let it wash over you, the film is an easy watch in a world that is cool and inviting. If you let the confusion consume you then the film is a headache that will push and pull at your brain until you can’t take it any more.
It is an easy watch, but not an easy story, because the puzzle is too complex. The puzzle contains parts that we can’t see, and in some sense Doc himself is a part of the puzzle that he is trying to figure out. Character’s enter the scene to drop clues and muddy the waters, then disappear again. We can’t tell if the information they give is help or harm, or even true. One character states the Golden Fang is a boat, another states the Golden Fang is a triad, another states the Golden Fang is a conglomerate of dentists. It all builds into this confused mess of frustration that we experience alongside Doc. And this is okay. This is the point of the film. It helps if you know this going into it.
Paul Thomas Anderson has developed a reputation for making bold films. And he makes them in an uncompromising way that can’t resonate with all viewers. This has split the critical response to Inherent Vice like hippies and squares.
Like many (all) PTA films it is a film that opens up like a flower with repeat viewing. It is a film about mood and it takes a viewing just to soak up the cinematography. But in all honesty, the story falls into place in the end.
Things click and make sense. You dig?
Movie comment on Elephant
sixteenmiles
Some thoughts on Elephant: https://16miles.wordpress.com/2015/05/18/elephant-2003/Part of the criticism and acclaim of Elephant is it’s total lack of any kind of morality. It portrays a neutral view of a horrific event. The film takes a camera and puts you, the viewer, inside of something brutal.
But there is a message in there somewhere, hidden in the labyrinthine high-school corridors. The message is in the total lack of care or presence of any adult figure. They are all vacant. All absent.
In the opening scene, John’s father is drifting drunk. This is the extent of his character. The principal of the school is patronising and unconcerned with reason. He looks down on John and is completely without care for his frustrations. The parent’s of the two killers are faceless ghosts that float around the screen and then disappear into the ether. Never seen again.
The strange thing about the film though, is how emotionless everyone seems. There is a scene in which three girls are sitting in the lunch hall, eating, conversing. Then they walk together, they talk, and like any other day they enter the bathroom together to force up their lunch. It seems ordinary. Where a character does display emotion, John retreats to an empty classroom to shed a tear. His friend asks “Did something bad happen?” and he responds “I don’t know.” There is a scene in amongst the chaos of the end where a fearless student (Benny) seems completely unconcerned by what is happening. He drifts through the burning, smoking hallways in a long continuous take. He helps a girl escape and for a moment we almost have a heroic figure. He finds himself sneaking up behind one of the shooters. Yet as quick as this brief glimpse of hope appeared, the shooter turns around and plugs a bullet right into him.
The film’s end is equal in how abrupt it is. A mere snapshot of an event. A portrait of these character’s life and frustrations. It ends with no conclusion or resolution. That is your responsibility as the viewer to come to.
Movie comment on Suspiria
sixteenmiles
Some thoughts on Suspiria: https://16miles.wordpress.com/2015/05/18/suspiria-1977/Suspiria is an oppressive blend of light, colour, shape and sound. It is an atmosphere that doesn’t let you breathe until the film closes. In the moments where it could slip into the realm of cheap B-Movie horror, it instead becomes art.
It isn’t the strength of the actors or the plot that will keep you gripped to the screen. The plot is absurd fantasy, as contrived as you would expect from a horror film. There is only a certain amount of willingness to believe in the absurd. Which is why the best horror is the best storytelling. It invests you so deep in something bizarre.
Suspiria instead has something else. It has a style unlike anything you have seen before or since. The lighting and set design is unreal; it is bursting. The set pieces are vast, jagged, cutting modern gothic. The soundtrack is a sour wash of melody that is overwhelming in the film’s quietest moments.
The thing about the film’s plot, though. It could let the film down. The acting could let the film down. Some dated blood effects could let the film down. But it’s hard to give the film a hard time about those things when they seem so small in the film’s grand scale.
Blog comment on Il futuro
sixteenmiles
Great! The new site looks fantastic.Movie comment on Top Gun
sixteenmiles
The most redeeming quality of this film was some of the dumbest dialogue I ever heard making it seem like a Naked Gun film.Guy walks into a room, stares directly into the open eyes of another character who is clearly awake and says "Are you awake?"
Guy says "Get out of here." to a guy who is clearly already leaving the room.
Girl says "I'll be right here if you need me." Then immediately drives off down the road.
Guy says "On the count of three.... THREE!" Where is the rest of the countdown?
The whole film is like this. Really dumb.
Movie comment on Inside Llewyn Davis
sixteenmiles
My empathy for Llewyn Davis was perhaps a little bit close to home. The film left me feeling profoundly sad about my own life and my own frustrating creative failures. This is what gripped me to the film more than anything and kept me invested in this character. All I wanted out of the film was for him to succeed, because in my mind that meant that I could succeed too.Movie comment on Paranormal Activity
sixteenmiles
This was not a good horror film.It nearly was, sure. But in the end it spoiled itself and in a format and genre that is built on making you invest in contrived situations, that is not forgivable.
Coming to this from a list titled '1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die' I was really expecting something groundbreaking to the horror genre and it just wasn't there. The Blair Witch did the found footage thing eight years beforehand, the film itself was relatively boring and ultimately just builds up to one jump scare. There is nothing particularly interesting about the characters or their relationship. Why is this film on the list?
Then I came here and read Dolwphin's comment:
Got it.
Movie comment on Le voyage à travers l'impossible
sixteenmiles
What a beautiful film, so well designed and pieced together. So ahead of its time. Méliès was the master.Yes, it looks a little dumb now, a lot dated. The plot is nothing more than a string of absurdities that happen. There are no real characters; just people that move across the screen and make motions. But this was one of the first moving paintings and it looks hell of cool and looking back on it can really make a person think about the evolution of cinema.
Movie comment on The 'Teddy' Bears
sixteenmiles
Something lynchian happens in the middle of this film, bookended by absolute averageness. The beginning of the film is so 'of its time' and so like any other emerging cinema experimentation you could shrug it off for any of the hundred others.Then something absolutely absurd happens. The film warps into a dreamlike scene that drums anxiety. It's hypnotizing, and then it ends.
And you are back to the mundane film that you started watching. That ends like any other mundane film of its time.
Movie comment on Report
sixteenmiles
Watch the first four minutes through a pair of sunglasses.This film makes a pretty stark commentary on repetitive news media and television; or maybe that interpretation is just a reflection of the time I live in. It actually shows very little, but it hammers a synchronized sound and film footage clip show at you so repetitively it becomes mesmerizing...
It's not really a documentary, and it feels like the film is not so much about the assassination of JFK but is really just trying to evoke an emotion about media in general. At least, that's my take on it.
Movie comment on Meshes of the Afternoon
sixteenmiles
It's nice to be able to say that a film really made you 'feel' something on an emotional level. Less nice to say that those emotions were 'confusion', 'boredom' even 'frustration'.All conventional narrative disappears in Meshes of the Afternoon and we are left in a world of unreal dream logic. This 'idea' has been done so well in films that came long after this one. The inspiration that David Lynch must have taken from this film is dripping from everything he ever made.
Still, there is only so much fun in digging to understand the narrative before it becomes hard work.
Movie comment on Scorpio Rising
sixteenmiles
For such a short film it takes a really long time to start feeling like there is any substance to it. The soundtrack feels oppressive at times, as chaotic as the clip show that is being blasted into your brain. There is not really any character or dialogue, just a mash of icons and symbols cutting into each other and combining to create meaning from their warped, amalgam form.A clip of Scorpio preaching cuts to a clip of Jesus preaching, cuts to a clip of Hitler preaching. It cuts and cuts and layers until all the imagery and meaning becomes overwhelming.
But, ultimately, who cares?
Well let's not give the film no credit; there is about fifty years worth of films that took inspiration from the films that took inspiration from Scorpio Rising and boy do we have to be thankful of that. At the end of the day however, trying to watch the film as an empty conduit, trying to absorb it without any prior knowledge or bias about the importance of the film, it just felt... weird.