GOTHIC (1986)

June 28, 2021

(Plex/tubi/VOD/Vudu) This is the predictable final entry in a three-part series of recommendations regarding films about Mary Shelley. It is, of course, Ken Russell’s GOTHIC (1985). Again, I’m no Mary Shelley scholar, and — given this final entry — it should be obvious that I have no interest in discussing the veracity of the portrayal of these real-life persons. (I simply don’t have the knowledge, but I don’t begrudge those that do.)

While GOTHIC is, on the surface, about the storytelling night between Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and Mary Shelley’s stepsister Claire, it’s primarily concerned with Mary and her life and her way of coping with this foursome, which becomes heightened via what one surmises is a fever dream.

GOTHIC is essentially fan-fiction, occasionally slash-fiction and, surprisingly, posits Mary as, for all intents and purposes, the Final Girl, with Lord Byron being the executor of the madness they endure. (Or not; there are many ways you can read it, but that’s my interpretation.)

There’s a lot to unpack in this film, far more than I can do justice to in a simple post, so I’ll just note a few highlights and leave it at that:

  • As usual, Russell has a ton of visual anachronisms, one of the boldest being the hexagonal ceiling molding designs, which are then mirrored when Mary finds herself as a prisoner.
  • It portrays Mary as someone who doesn’t buy into Percy’s ‘free love’, and touches on her problematic pregnancies.
  • I just happened to be going about this three-part project as I was reading MEN, WOMEN, AND CHAIN SAWS, which spends a significant amount of time talking about horror films’ handling of eyes, then Percy seeing nipples as eyes, which MEN, WOMEN, AND CHAIN SAWS author Carol J. Clover touches on regarding the feminine masochism viewing perspective, and yeah, there’s not more perfect film for that than this.
  • I’ll also note: I first saw this film at what I think is absolutely the perfect time in one’s life, in my mid-teens, thanks to my friend Chris, although I do know I spent a lot of time staring at the LaserDisc cover well before actually watching the film. I hadn’t re-watched it until today. It is far crazier and hornier than I remember, and I can’t believe we got away with watching it while his parents were away.

My friend Mark pointed out two other Mary Shelley films, both released in the late 80s, which I have yet to watch — there are DVDs available of both, but they can’t be streamed — that I hope to catch, and perhaps you may be interested in them as well:

ROWING WITH THE WIND (1988):

HAUNTED SUMMER (1988, which certainly backgrounds Mary, but is very much about her):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltoEFL4jcn0

And, of course, here’s the trailer:

A NIGHTMARE WAKES (2020)

June 27, 2021

(AMC+/DirecTV/Shudder/VOD) This is the second in a three-part series of recommendations regarding films about Mary Shelley. Unlike MARY SHELLEY, A NIGHTMARE WAKES is far more about Mary writing FRANKENSTEIN, often through surreal vignettes, although first-time feature writer/director Nora Unkel also focuses on Mary’s tragic pregnancies and miscarriages. Unsurprisingly, the act of writing FRANKENSTEIN is rather bluntly portrayed in a way that may feel obvious, but works within the context of the film.

I was lukewarm about this take on Mary Shelley when I first watched it. It seemed rather reductive, and the plotting and visuals — especially the color timing — felt heavy-handed. However, after watching MARY SHELLEY, I saw them as two sides of the same coin. Each film neglects certain facets of her life, while highlighting what each filmmaker wanted to extoll and/or examine. Mary Shelley is a fascinating figure in that you can piece together her life in a myriad of ways; one can practically stitch together any narrative you want from her life. Consequently, it is far more telling about the writer/director than about Mary Shelley herself, and often about using the back-story of a person as a springboard for further social and cultural scrutiny.

I feel the ‘biopic’ label is one that viewers ascribe to films when they know it’s based on someone’s life, regardless of whether the film or work is intended as such; viewers often expect it to hew as close to reality and historic facts as possible. That’s not necessarily the case. I can understand some folks feeling ‘betrayed’ when the persona presented doesn’t align, and there are definitely moral quandaries that come with misrepresenting one’s life to tell your own tale.* However: these auteurs are adapting pre-existing works, except that the pre-existing work is someone’s life story.

I’d love to write more about similar extrapolations regarding recreating people’s lives and events (for another recent example, see: ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI… — no one knows exactly what went down when Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, and Jim Brown met that night), whether this sort of personal pseudo-non-fiction is fan-fiction, the history of this sort of narrative handling, and how folks react differently to fictional portrayals of real people depending on the medium, but instead I’ll post a link to the A NIGHTMARE WAKES trailer:

“I feel like it’s a story. My story.”

  • I am not a Mary Shelley scholar — I only know the basics of her life — so I can’t speak as to whether MARY SHELLEY or A NIGHTMARE WAKES betrayed her. I’ll note that I did previously recommend SHIRLEY, which I initially believed to willfully misrepresent Shirley Jackson’s life to tell another’s tale. However, I believe I was guilty of assuming the film would play by traditional biopic rules, and not be its own work, and later on ‘rediscovered’ the film regarding its intent.

MARY SHELLEY (2017)

June 26, 2021

(AMC+/VOD)? This is the first in a three-part series of recommendations regarding films about Mary Shelley.

At this point, I’ve seen more films about Mary Shelley than I’ve seen FRANKENSTEIN adaptations. That makes sense though, as Mary Shelley is endlessly fascinating. This take on her life is from Haifaa Al-Mansour (WADJDA, and the previously recommended THE PERFECT CANDIDATE) and starts off surprisingly early in Mary’s life, before she meets Percy, immediately giving Mary her own autonomy.

I’m sure many have their image of what they expect for someone portraying Mary Shelley, but I don’t, and I have no qualms with Elle Fanning’s portrayal. It’s sharp, and Fanning exudes a haunted quality, and how she darts her eyes in specific scenes plays rather effectively.

Al-Mansour rightfully leans on how much of a dick Percy (Douglas Booth) is — especially concerning his constant bullying about having an open relationship — but she also casts Mary’s stepsister Claire (Bel Powley) in a rather unglamorous light, portraying her as a foolish girl who latches onto Mary and simply won’t let go until she latches onto Lord Byron (Tom Sturridge). In short, this is less a piece about Mary Shelley writing FRANKENSTEIN and more about Mary herself, and it’s a welcome relief.

While the majority of the film is finely executed, the end narratively dodges quite a bit in order to squarely land something resembling an uplifting ending. While it doesn’t feel entirely disingenuous, it does feel far too neat.

“There is always another way. And when we make such choices, there are inevitably consequences.”

THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW (2021)

June 25, 2021

(Netflix) I’m not going to say that THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW is good, and I’m definitely going to ignore the author of the source material — I haven’t read the original novel and have no plans to do so, but if you need some backstory, here you go: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/02/11/a-suspense-novelists-trail-of-deceptions — and I can certainly see why Tracy Letts was drawn to it. If you’ve seen (previously recommended) BUG, you know how entranced he is by writing about Hitchcockian women, plus it allowed him to indulge his love for classic Hollywood films. (The film runs through the gamut of Hitchcock’s many suspense films and thrillers, but especially the previously recommended THE LODGER and, naturally, REAR WINDOW.)

Allegedly, it got away from him, but it does seem like the film started off with good intent. While the Brooklyn townhouse seems wildly unrealistic as an urban space, I can’t help but marvel at the use of color, space, and general production design. The cast is tremendous, and it’s well-paced, at least until the final act.

Again, I don’t want to oversell this film. Letts has gone on the record saying that adapting it was an extremely unpleasant experience due to the litany of studio notes, and then there were endless rewrites and then reshoots, and I can’t wait for the inevitable oral history of the production that’ll come about in five years or so. That said, if you can overlook the reveal, ending, and epilogue, it’s far more interesting than say, THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN.

ELECTRIC DREAMS (1984)

June 24, 2021

(DVD/BR/YT) ELECTRIC DREAMS is an odd high-concept romantic rivalry/surveillance thriller about architect Miles (Lenny von Dohlen, best known as the agoraphobic florist from TWIN PEAKS), his computer, cellist Madeline (Virginia Madsen), and the love triangle they inhabit, one with shades of CYRANO DE BERGERAC.

Given that I was both a computer nerd and practicing cellist as a youth, I’ve seen this film more than a few times over the years. Yes, its portrayal for what a mid-1980s computer was capable of doing was wildly overblown, but it had a fantastic soundtrack — as you would expect as it’s courtesy of Giorgio Moroder — and was extraordinarily shot. It has a number of lush scenes that highlight the difference between video and film, as well as a more than a few fantastically composed visual vignettes, and Madsen is absolutely charming as Madeline. It certainly was one of the first narrative films that ‘spoke’ to me, that made me feel seen, given that it was both about computers and a cellist.

The film features a musical number where Madeline warms up by playing Bach’s Minuet in G Major (what the ELECTRIC DREAMS soundtrack dubs as the ‘Mad Minuet’), which was one of my warm-ups when I was a young cellist so I can’t help but love it, but I also adore how long and -fun- the scene is. I was never a brilliant cellist — although I was good enough to be in a quartet to play for then-Vermont governor Howard Dean — but when I got on a roll, when I was in the zone, it felt just as exuberant and gleeful. You can view the number below:

ELECTRIC DREAMS has been unavailable in the U.S. for some time now, but there was a recent UK Blu-Ray release via Second Sight. There’s also a copy floating around YouTube that I may have already ‘accidentally’ linked to. (Shh, don’t tell!)

“Hm. Very smart, but weird.”

P.S. There’s a great post-mortem about the film available on YouTube. And, for what it’s worth, there are two scenes I remember vividly from watching it as a youth: the motherboard being washed out, and Madeline’s cello being crushed in the elevator. Madsen’s method time was worth it.

THE SECRET TO SUPERHUMAN STRENGTH (2021)

June 15, 2021

I’ve been a bit disheartened to see that this release wasn’t as buzzy as it should have been, considering it’s the first new graphic novel from Alison Bechdel (DYKES TO WATCH OUT FOR, FUN HOME) in almost a decade, but so it goes. Hopefully it’ll gain some traction, but I do fear that the subject material was ill-suited for a pre-post-pandemic time.

As you might expect, it’s another fantastic memoir from Bechdel, and visually far more vibrant than anything else she’s done so far. I balked a bit when I heard that, since I’ve always found her stark line work and muted use of colors to play towards the tone of her material, but Holly Rae Taylor’s minimalist watercolors never trample over Bechdel’s pens and, most certainly, emphasize the physical exertion Bechdel’s put herself through over the course of her life.

To summarize: THE SECRET TO SUPERHUMAN STRENGTH is about Bechdel’s lifelong obsessions, first and foremost exercise, but also work, writers, and her attempts to find a proper, healthy balance, one of which I think practically anyone can empathize with. (Personally, there were more than a few passages of her self-reflection that reminded me of the ways I’d try to exhaust myself pre-pandemic.)

Some of the material will naturally be familiar with you if you’ve read her prior memoirs, but very little of it feels like a retread. While the tale of her experience, and her examination of writers’ lives such as Jack Kerouac, Margaret Fuller, and Dorothy Wordsworth make for compelling reading, what really drew me into this piece was how perfectly paced and managed it is. It’s a brilliant showcase that demonstrates how she’s evolved from someone who thought of herself as a ‘just a cartoonist’ to someone who not only knows how to write and visually tell a story, but also to do so in deeply multifaceted way. Her use of visual elements, be it with animals or simple background objects practically demands a re-read, but she also knows exactly when to throw in a callback to forty pages before in way that is leading, but not obvious, and twists it into more than just a callback.

I can’t neglect her sumi-e-esque splash pages, all of which are glorious and deviate from her traditional style, but are never superfluously thrown in to break up any ‘potential monotony’ of telling a paneled story.

It’s a tremendous accomplishment, one that I look forward to revisiting.

https://www.hmhbooks.com/shop/books/the-secret-to-superhuman-strength/9780544387652

An aside: I received the book as part of a Chicago Humanities Festival incentive: pay X $$ and you get the book (via Chicago’s fantastic Seminary Co-op bookstores), plus access to a live virtual interview between her and artist (and friend) Nicole Eisenman. It was the most delightful piece of pandemic virtual media promotion I’ve seen. I could have listened to them talk for hours, and you can hear the same conversation via the link below:

One last thing, which might be a bit of a brag, but: Bechdel not only signed my pre-order copy, but also drew herself as a chickadee. If you read it, keep an eye out for chickadees.

FAMICOM DETECTIVE CLUB: THE MISSING HEIR (1988/2021)

June 10, 2021

When the original FAMICOM DETECTIVE CLUB: THE MISSING HEIR was released in 1988 (solely in Japan for the Famicom add-on Family Computer Disk System) it was deemed an adventure game, but nowadays this HD remaster for the Switch would almost certainly be labeled a ‘visual novel’, even though the HUD does feel quite a bit like a verb-based LucasArts SCUMM interface. (I’ll define the difference as: adventure games rely on puzzles to break up the narrative storytelling. Visual novels lack puzzle-based obstructions, relying on narrative-based ones, although THE MISSING HEIR does have one very weak puzzle that reminds me of Sierra’s MANHUNTER which, if you’ve ever played it, should make you wince.)

THE MISSING HEIR, written by Yoshio Sakamoto — also responsible for many METROID games, as well as KID ICARUS and WARIOWARE — features a bit of interactive detective fiction, along with a lot of soap opera: the head of a family business has died, and the heir cannot be found. An extremely young detective — around the age of 17 — has been brought in to investigate, at the request of a long-lasting butler of the Ayashiro family.

Unfortunately, the young detective — who, as in the style of the times, you named yourself — has taken a tumble and has amnesia, and essentially has to restart his investigation into the Ayashiro family.

I don’t want to give too much away about the tale so, apart from a few frustrating interface facets — there are times where you have to select certain menu options five or six times before a character will open up (rule of thirds, folks) — it’s a enjoyable but slight murder mystery, one of which is completely in my wheelhouse, and I’m looking forward to playing the HD remaster of the prequel, THE GIRL WHO STANDS BEHIND.

RESIDENT EVIL VILLAGE (2021)

June 2, 2021

Yes, I mostly played RESIDENT EVIL VILLAGE to partake in the cultural conversation as, apart from RESIDENT EVIL 4, I don’t care much for the series’ trademark blend of jump scares and camp. (Although I am now very tempted to dive into RESIDENT EVIL 7, which I initially wrote off as an interactive facsimile of THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE.)

VILLAGE severely overtaxed my ailing PS4 — my poor console’s fan was working so hard that it trampled over any aural atmosphere Village may have — but it’s undeniably a triumph of tech and scenic design. The attention to details is astounding, mesmerizing even. That said, it feels like it’s design-by-commitee that succeeds in spite of itself. If it reminds me of anything, it’s HALF-LIFE 2 with its regimented and sectional use of mechanics. Hell, Heisenberg’s factory feels like a whole-cloth rip of HALF-LIFE 2’s final chapter, sans gravity gun. (That said, HALF-LIFE 2 doesn’t hate hands nearly as much as RESIDENT EVIL VILLAGE.

Still, it’s a fun time! As you’d expect from Resident Evil, the characters are all half-baked, even though they’re clearly cribbing from Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid boss book, so it’s a bit sad to see characters that could have been interesting reduced to caricatures, but it’s Capcom and it’s RESIDENT EVIL and to expect anything more would be wishful thinking.

SO THIS IS PARIS (1926)

May 31, 2021

(YouTube) SO THIS IS PARIS is an early sex farce from Ernst Lubitsch, the likes of which he really didn’t deviate from for the most of his career. However, as it is a silent film, it is couched in actions, glances, overt visual symbolism, and little subtext whatsoever, much less the coy and quippy dialogue that Lubitsch would become known for. (Not that he didn’t try to do so via intertitles.)

It’s a fun little film and, while it’s set in Paris, that’s simply an excuse for the characters to get away with more prurient behavior than they would if it’d been SO THIS IS NEW YORK.

One caveat: the film is often speciously claimed as the first silent film to depict a choreographed dance scene, a rather extended club scene concerning a Charleston contest. Given how silent film grew from theater, and given how slapdash the dancing in the scene is, I’m inclined to think that claim is a studio invention. (I’d argue if there was any choreographer there, it was the editor trying to match footage.)

Sadly, said dance number is the only easily available clip you’ll find, apart from YouTube rips of the entire film, and that will have to serve as a trailer:

SCARECROW (1973)

May 30, 2021

(VOD) I am a sucker for films that put fragile masculinity on display, and not only does this film have it in spades, but you have Gene Hackman and Al Pacino doing all of the leg work! Long story short: Hackman is a repeat violent offender who randomly meets Pacino, a jokey people-pleaser, on the road. They become ill-suited partners trying to work towards their specific endpoints: Hackman wants to set up a car wash in Minneapolis. Pacino wants to indulge him, but first wants to deliver a lamp to his estranged son. Matters escalate.

SCARECROW was directed by Jerry Schatzberg, who previously helmed an adaptation of THE PANIC IN NEEDLE PARK (the screenplay happened to co-written by Joan Didion), and it was a breakout role for Pacino. With SCARECROW, Pacino brings a vulnerability and heart to his role that he rarely exudes. Hackman is a surprisingly nasty piece of work, steamrolling through scenes, but you can sense far more behind his actions than simply being a vicious bastard.