This movie has no right to be as good as it is. It’s a B-movie through and through.
The plot is pretty solid sci-fi and has a good pace. There’s always something interesting happening and it ends with a bang. Puts some Hollywood movies to shame, actually.
Oh that movie. It was ok. Interesting idea, the characters were unbelievable and mildly annoying when unneeded, and I don’t know about the physics of entering the cave (if you put a hand in, surely it would get stuck since it’s extended from your body and inside the low-time zone, so it would take years to get in?) but otherwise nice.
I just had to assume the time dilation area had a “fuzzy” perimeter that gradually increased the further you entered until you were in the pocket. Otherwise, my Vulcan mind wouldn’t allow me to enjoy the movie.
Then, of course, you’ll bring up the pocket’s time dilation versus earth’s normal flow and that the “fuzziness” would have to stretch at least thousands of miles not to cause extreme oxygen deprivation to to the farthest body parts as the flow of blood would “relatively” cease in the nearest areas of the body, effectively killing anyone that got near… and to that I say, “I love lamp.”
There’s at least one sci-fi mystery novel where a time dilation field is used as a murder weapon. Stick your hand across the boundary, and you probably lose it, because your blood can’t flow properly for (at least on one side) a very long time. Shine an ordinary flashlight from the “fast time” side to the “slow time” side and you can burn someone to death.
It’s one of the Larry Niven “Gil the Arm” ones but I forget which story in particular. The other detail I remember is that the machine making the field has a mysterious purplish sci-fi glow to it and nobody can figure out why—it’s because (not really a spoiler but a fun little puzzle to guess) it’s actually glowing infrared, from the normal heat of operation, and that light is getting blueshifted into the visible spectrum when it crosses the boundary.
Just watched the grimmest movie I’ve seen in a while-- Hunter Hunter, which was very well reviewed and is a well-acted and well-paced movie. It’s also a truly nasty piece of work, the most feel-bad movie I’ve seen in a long time, sort of like if Deliverance had a hate child with Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. If you’re in the mood for that kind of thing, I recommend it.
Just watched David Fincher’s new film, The Killer, which I feel like I should have liked more than I did. Basic plot summary: hitman takes catnaps whenever and wherever he can during the long, boring hours of waiting for targets to show up.
But the best movie I’ve seen in a couple of months is definitely Talk To Me. Highly recommend.
I recently saw Le Cercle Rouge at the Pacific Film Archive. Gritty and stylish 1970s heist film starring Alain Delon, with a cool jazz soundtrack and minimal dialogue. Very Tarantino-esque, but not chatty at all.
I watched 3-Iron (2004) a while back and it still lingers in my mind.
It’s incredibly well done and feels very unique even after all these years. The main protagonist (who breaks into homes, leaving them in better condition afterwards) doesn’t speak, so much of the movie is silent. The love affair that forms is like no other on screen. It’s clever and thoughtful on many levels. The skill that the protagonist develops to keep the affair going is really fun to watch play out.
Anyway, it’s a really good movie even if you don’t normally watch foreign films. You won’t be disappointed.
We watched Birth/Rebirth yesterday, and it lingers in my mind. It’s a women’s horror movie about pregnancy and motherhood, and I think Mary Shelley would be pleased with it. It deserves its high rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Recommend, although if you are anti-choice you will probably find it upsetting.
Talk to Me was SO good. It straddles the line being both tragic and full of dread, but still somehow a fun movie via great performances and cinematography.
I feel the same way about Requiem for a Dream (not fun, but re-watchable tragedy) which is a tour-de-force and one of the most imaginatively realized movies about drug-addiction that I can actually watch again and again for the performances and cinematography and soundtrack. (Qualifier: I’ve fortunately not been closely affected by friends or family dealing with addiction. I know people who say they will not watch that movie again because it hits so close to home.) Ellen Burstyn was robbed of an Oscar and her monologue to Jared Leto before things crash and burn crumples me every time.
Marlon Wayans and Jennifer Connelly are both great.
I’ve crushed on Jennifer Connelly forever (we are only months apart in age so it’s never been weird, even for Labyrinth) and I consider it a major accomplishment that she pulls off a frontally-bottomless scene (not that scene at the end - the one in the mirror where she’s just thinking) that cannot in any way be enjoyed pruriently due to her astounding performance and the emotional context in the movie when it occurs.
I was one of the people that found this movie almost unbearably upsetting, although when it came out I was dealing with a friend whose addiction issues were way too similar. But I do remember how good the performances were. Maybe now that some time has passed and I’ve grown a thicker skin around the issue, I should try it again.
And RE Talk to Me, have you noticed that the Aussies are just steamrolling over everyone else in the horror movie department? They’re even beating Japan these days, and that’s hard to do.
Yeah, it’s like they (similarly with Asian cinema) don’t conform to US conventions of writing and movie-making and it feels so original and new!
I liked that Talk to Me felt like real people, and everyone wasn’t conventionally “movie beautiful.” I’m not in that generation, but the party scenes with everyone sitting around on their phones seemed so authentic and not at all following the Hollywood “teen party” trope. And there is genuine humor with the horror that comes from good writing and character relationships so it’s not just pasted in. I loved the Mom, “So when’s the party?” And that comedy was from a genuine place and didn’t clash with her demeanor switch in the hospital.
I also appreciated they didn’t really employ cheap jump scares. There was startling imagery they’d smash-cut to because that’s as the characters experience it, but they did that thing where they show you something weird you don’t have context for and just linger and because it doesn’t release the anxiety with a jump scare it’s worse because you keep looking at it going WTF??? That lady that crawled out of the corner almost made me flee the room.
And the gore - extensive but not gratuitous because it’s plot relevant and that scene that goes on and on and you’re trapped there with everyone else unable to get away because the movie - again not being Hollywood - doesn’t do a polite cutaway like “after several more excruciating minutes of teenager’s face vs unyielding table edge…you get the idea we’ll just skip past all this” as you’d expect! Then, when you see the results in the hospital it’s not the normal “ew-gross!” Hollywood jump-cut and it invokes painful sympathy rather than revulsion because you were there and saw what caused it and care about the characters. “Yep, that’s exactly what he would probably look like after all that…”
Also: Best final ten seconds in a movie ever.
You two seem to be real horror movie buffs. The fellow that runs the local movie rental place was eerily serious as he pointed me to a copy of Cannibal Holocaust (1980).
My God. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. It’s unsettling and raw. In some scenes, it feels as if things went too far in real life. And I’m not even talking about the real animals (I believe it was 2) that were killed on film. It’s found footage style and there will never be another movie made like this again.
Ten days after its premiere in Milan, the film was seized by the Italian courts and director Ruggero Deodato was arrested and charged with obscenity. He was later charged with murdering several actors on camera and faced life in prison. The cast had signed contracts requiring them to disappear for a year after shooting to maintain the illusion that they had died. Deodato contacted Luca Barbareschi and told him to contact the three other actors who played the missing film team. When the actors appeared in court, alive and well, the murder charges were dropped.
The iconic poster image for the film shows a native girl impaled on a stick. In court, Ruggero Deodato explained that the girl sat on a bicycle seat attached to the pole’s base while holding a small pointed piece of balsa wood in her mouth. Fake blood was added afterward. He commented that the girl was unusually calm and remained very still during filming.
After seeing the film, director Sergio Leone wrote a letter to Ruggero Deodato, which stated, “Dear Ruggero, what a movie! The second part is a masterpiece of cinematographic realism, but everything seems so real that I think you will get in trouble with all the world.”
It’s a significant piece of horror movie history, without question.
I saw Cannibal Holocaust when I was maybe 16. Rented it with some friends from a local video store that had tons of cult movies. Some scenes left an apparently lifelong impression, since I remember them vividly to this day! Also rented such gems as Pink Flamingos and Cremaster 3: The Order from that store. It was a great little place that introduced me to lots of weird stuff.
3-Iron is awesome. I second that recommendation! Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring is another excellent movie by the same director.
Just watched The Killer the other night. I also felt that I should’ve liked it more than I did. Unlike Cannibal Holocaust, I have the sense I won’t remember it too well after some time passes. Biggest takeaway: it made me want to rewatch Le Samourai.
These days I mostly stream movies at home, but I went to see The Boy and the Heron in a real theater last week. Kinda middling for a Miyazaki movie, in my opinion, but it still had jaw-dropping animation, and some parts were incredible, like the scene where all the fish and frogs are beckoning the boy to “join us.” That part gave me chills! This also seems like the type of movie where my appreciation might grow on a rewatch.
Oh man! I am not at all a movie person - I enjoy them while I’m watching, but I can only think of, like, two movies that had a significant emotional impact on me or that I ever think about after having seen them. But this is one of the two! Gosh it’s amazing.
Funnily enough, I only saw it the once, in a theater when it first came out, which must have been twenty years ago now. But there’s entire sequences I can still remember shot by shot, like where the main character is hauling the wheel behind him on the ice… oh, it’s so good.
Yeah, it’s a memorable one! I also saw it in theaters when it first came out, and haven’t seen it again since, but it left a strong impression. I went on a little Kim Ki-duk kick after that and saw most of his earlier movies. Then I was keeping up with his newer ones for a while, which is how 3-Iron got onto my radar. But I haven’t seen anything he made in the last decade or so. I should make time to check out the rest.
But now I have to ask… if Spring, Summer was one of the two movies that significantly impacted you, then what was the other one?
I went to an a screening of all five Cremaster films once. That was pretty hard going.
I saw Napoleon last night. It was cheeky at times. Almost too cheeky, I feel. But I think biopics are always tough. So many things seem to happen the same way in different lives, and then if you don’t depict those things, it can feel like not enough was covered.
Tonight I’m going to The Marvels. This is kind of as a break between two 158 minute films, as tomorrow I’m going to the Hunger Games prequel.
The last film I streamed was Wills and Burke (1985), a Python-esque parody of Burke and Wills (1985), the latter a $10 million Jack Thompson epic about the famous explorers who died crossing Australia in the 1800s. Wills and Burke was released a week before the ‘real’ one and is famous for being critically hated and making no money.
Having finally seen it, I already have a soft spot for it. I especially like the scene where Wills pretends to die to get Burke to stop talking (Burke’s the prat). Then Burke says ‘Oh, that’s not how you die, you die like this! ACCK AAAAAGHGHG’. Then Wills makes those sounds and actually dies.
Some critics in the day though it was too hard to make a comedy about two explorers who died in situ. The film also has Nicole Kidman hanging out in the male bathroom so she can learn how to act like a man when she plays Burke in a musical based on the expedition during the final scenes. Wills and Burke can be seen for free on Youtube.
-Wade
I honestly didn’t have another specific one in mind when I wrote that, but I guess if I had to pick another it’d be Magnolia? I don’t think I liked it as much as I did Spring, Summer, but I do have a clear memory of stumbling out of the movie theater after three hours of emotionally-draining melodrama paying off in big-swing catharsis and feeling like a zombie for the rest of the day, so I guess that counts for something?
(I have a big soft spot for the Lord of the Rings movies, too, but that’s largely down to them being something my sister and I watched together).
Top Secret!
I never liked Airplane much. I need to watch spaceballs though…
Comb the desert!
