(Shudder/VOD) A post-apocalyptic vision from Academy Award winning visual effects expert Phil Tippett that was thirty years in the making. You can see that effort on the screen, in every absolutely filthy, disgusting stop-motion frame. Think: the Brothers Quay, but with far more bodily fluids.
MAD GOD harkens back to the days of the illustrated magazine and cult film HEAVY METAL. It’s wall-to-wall visual phantasmagoria, but the type that — while disturbing — also often inspires.
It’s utterly indescribable, often not-quite coherent; a complete marvel. It is not for everyone — especially for those who are squeamish or prefer their horror to not feel like an exquisite corpse experiment — but you will never see anything like it.
(AMC+/kanopy/peacock/Prime/VOD) Shirley Jackson has been lucky in that she had to suffer few terrible film adaptations — even THE HAUNTING (1999) is better than it needed to be and probably wouldn’t cause her to roll in her grave — and this adaptation of WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE is no exception. While it ramps up the spectacle a bit and cuts a bit of the fat, it’s completely faithful to a tale of two sisters, of abuse, of being castigated by locals. Oh, and it’s bolstered by an amazing cast: Taissa Farmiga as the younger Blackwood, Alexandra Daddario as the elder, and Crispin Glover as their uncle.
Stacie Passon’s take captures the vacillation between fear and comfort that I felt Jackson captured as an anxious person; Daddario is perfectly cast, with her almost-preternatural blue eyes, and Passon commands the atmosphere. The set design is pitch-perfect, and she even manages to keep Crispin Glover dialed-in.
(Starz/VOD) SERIAL MOM is, admittedly, not the most popular John Waters film, but it is one of my favorites of his. (That said, I’m a bad cinephile and have never seen PINK FLAMINGOS, but oddly have seen everything else of his.) It heralds to a time during the 1990s when charisma and murder could get you anywhere, and Waters sensationalizes and satirizes that with a brilliant cast: a never better Kathleen Turner, Sam Waterston, a pre-HACKERS Matthew Lilliard, and Waters staple Ricki Lake.
It features the suburban candy-coating you expect from John Waters with a bitter, but welcome, aftertaste.
(freevee/Plex/Pluto/tubi/VOD) WOLF CREEK is the first film from Australian Greg McLean — I previously wrote about his second film, the creature feature ROGUE — but WOLF CREEK was what made me take note of him. While WOLF CREEK is ultimately a slasher film, it prioritizes the human experience, and revels in it as much as possible. It’s a slow burn of a character drama, of youths exploring their freedom for about the first half of the film, and it’s quaint and peaceful and safe. Then it takes a hard left-turn, as some lives do.
(Cinemax/VOD) GHOST SHIP is a mostly forgotten film, partially because once you get past the opening it’s very much a stock haunted house movie except set on a stylish 1960s cruise liner.
However, the opening sequence is absolutely worth the price of admission and, despite the fact that I haven’t seen the film in years and years, I still remember it fondly. The scene lasts under five minutes, has the barest of dialogue, but it leaves a lasting impression. Once you know that Steve Beck — mostly known for visual effects for water-based features like THE ABYSS and THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER — directed it you realize why he was drawn to this for his follow-up to THIR13EN GHOSTS.
Opening scene:
It also features a quality cast, including Karl Urban, Gabriel Byrne, Julianna Margulies, and a very young Emily Browning (GOD HELP THE GIRL’s -Musician Please Take Heed-). Is it an essential work of horror? No, but it’s a lot of fun.
(AMC+/hoopla/kanopy/peacock/tubi/etc.) TRIANGLE is a sort of THE PHILADELPHIA EXPERIMENT meets TIMECRIMES horror-thriller that’s tautly and expertly woven by SEVERANCE (2006) writer/director Christopher Smith. It features Melissa George (best known by me via her time on ALIAS but she was also a lead in 30 DAYS OF NIGHT), and really, that’s all you need to know.
(Cinemas/Prime) I was one of the few folks who watched HBO’s GIRLS simply because it was from the director of TINY FURNITURE. I know that Lena Dunham is a rather polarizing individual in media, but I love her voice, while realizing that it is extremely selective, it is also very distinct.
CATHERINE CALLED BIRDY is no different, despite the fact that it’s based on a children’s book that Dunham didn’t pen. It’s the story of a medieval youth, Catherine, often called Birdy (the brilliant Bella Ramsey, who stole every scene she was in on GAME OF THRONES as Lyanna Mormont), trying to navigate life while her alcoholic father (Hot Priest Andrew Scott) tries to sell her off to a suitor.
While that sounds rather tragic, it ultimately isn’t. It’s a carefully calibrated tale of life and emotion and struggles, and features Dunham’s quick wit and humor (as well as all of the trappings that come with her work).
(epix/Prime/Shudder) MESSIAH OF EVIL was the first film from power-couple Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, who went on to pen AMERICAN GRAFFITI and INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM (and HOWARD THE DUCK, which almost certainly killed their Hollywood careers), but you wouldn’t quite know it from the ramshackle structure of the film.
MESSIAH OF EVIL feels like a very padded CARNIVAL OF SOULS by way of George Romero; it almost feels like outsider art at times. It’s barely cohesive, it’s clearly borrowing from Italian giallo films — to the point where I was shocked to see an Los Angeles-based Ralph’s appear — but I found it to be a fascinating work, partially due to its use of Godard-ian pop art, splashes of paint, and flashy production design. It’s not a great film, but it’s an extraordinarily striking horror film, and that’s enough for me in October.
PEARL is the opportunistic prequel to X, shot partially due to the fact that Ti West and the crew of X were stuck in New Zealand during the pandemic, they were listless, and he certainly made the most of it by fleshing out the ‘X’ storyline.
PEARL takes place in 1918, during the height of the “Spanish Influenza” — conveniently having a writerly reason for masks while shooting through the COVID pandemic — and concerns itself with the youthful edition of the elderly murderous wife featured in X, the titular Pearl. Unlike X, this is more of a character study, but includes faux-Technicolor bravado mimicking the films of John Ford, George Cukor, and Douglas Sirk.
We get the back-story of young Pearl, a woman — a farmer’s daughter — who thrills in killing creatures and feeding them to the nearby crocodile (also featured in X), one that dovetails with her zeal to be immortalized by Hollywood, not unlike X’s Maxine’s go-for-broke need to be seen by others. Matters escalate, most notably regarding a local theater projectionist who has a thing for skin flicks, in which Pearl finds her agency.
While there isn’t much more on the page than that — and those expecting PEARL to be as blood-soaked as X will be disappointed — it features Ti West’s heartfelt warmth towards sympathy for his protagonists, as murderous as they may be. It’s slower, it revels in long shots and eye-popping color — a welcome change from the miserable desaturated hues of most films nowadays — but oddly ramps the visual tone up when necessary, including a jarring giallo-esque segue near the end that you’ll know when you see it.
I’m not surprised that he made this paean to 50s Technicolor melodramas, but I am surprised he managed to get it made, and I can’t wait to see MAXXXINE — the closer to the trilogy.
This won’t be a full and proper post, but simply a place for me to scrawl down a few thoughts about Jordan Peele’s latest film NOPE. If you haven’t seen it, while I don’t believe in spoilers, I do think it’s best enjoyed going in with as little knowledge of the film as possible.
Also, the following notes may not make much sense without having seen the film.
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If I had to review this film for a traditional outfit, one which required me to suggest whether the layperson should see it, I’m afraid I simply would not be up for the job. While NOPE leans on a lot of modern visual setups, mostly of the Spielbergian kind such as lots of low, center framing with the camera swooping up to them, it is primarily concerned with giving the audience a crash course in early film techniques and process.
As someone who has a dog-eareard Eadweard Muybridge photo study bookmark in my satchel right now, obviously I will respond to this film far differently than most. I simply could not judge this film without taking that facet in mind. Here’s my very lengthy evidence:
“No, please don’t look in the horse’s eyes,” horse trainer OJ says on a film set, just as a technician swivels around a reflective globe, causing the horse to see itself which results in on-set bucking.
Later on in the film, we see the incident that caused a trained chimpanzee to go wild on a 90s TV sitcom set: a group of reflective balloons cause the chimpanzee to see itself. (Some may argue that it was the popping of a balloon, and perhaps; I’d have to see it again, but this feels neater and more intended than a simple balloon pop.) The chimpanzee snaps and a violent spree ensues. As the chimp is coming down, it senses the wide-eyed stare of young sitcom co-star Ricky watching. (The result is a clever almost-fistbumb, mimicking Spielberg’s E.T., but that’s irrelevent here.)
After the first act, OJ, his sister, and a Fry’s Electronics employee are all concerned with catching an alien roaming in the desert sky on camera, hoping it’ll solve all of their financial problems, creating their own camera coverage setup, effectively shaping their own film studio, with the alien as their elusive star player. All they needed were some overpowered spotlights to complete the picture.
The alien starts off as what could be construed as an eye, but it’s designed more like a lens. The sand typhoons viewers see? Dust motes. When we see the audience of Jupiter’s Claim travel through the alien, that’s not just done because it’d be grossly amusing; they’re energy traveling down the lens to ultimately be embedded into the alien. I believe that’s why hear their screams, even after we know they’re long gone.
(Yes, upon re-reading this it makes that sound bonkers, but it works.)
Antlers Holst’s crank-based IMAX camera may seem to be important here as a callback to the days of hand-cranked filmmaking, but it’s the camera reload that is the most important part here. Yes, it heightens the suspense, but it also shows the audience how film cameras work.
There are the white eyes of the inflatable dancing noodles, an absolutely perfect visual that also doubles to underscore the use of reflective light.
As they continue to damage the alien, its form changes, until by the end it appears to be zooming in via bellows, trying to capture the glances it’s finding harder to perceive. (In this case, I believe we’re rolling back to static photography.)
There’s the mimicking of an eye with the well and the flashpot bulbs.
One could make the argument that the use of the Ricky balloon blocks the alien’s sight and that’s its downfall, but I think that might be a reach.
While all of these devices are used to thrilling effect in NOPE, they’re not arbitrary: they serve to 1) showcase the history of early film techniques and 2) underscore how something like an eyes and lens use each other: light bounces off of the iris allowing us to see, while lenses absorb the light, casting it against a rendering surface. (Or: the eye emits, the lens takes in.)
There’s a lot more to unpack from NOPE, from Hollywood’s history of shooting outdoors, before the days of reasonable artificial lighting, to the way they would use portholes with their indoor studios to illuminate them. The way the desert was used by Hollywood in the days of the westerns, for example.
Also, there’s the undeniable aspect of how people of color are often poorly lit in films, poorly portrayed in films, and thus poorly seen in general.
These are all just thoughts from an initial viewing, and I may be incorrectly remembering them, so I reserve the right to tweak this post accordingly after a second viewing! I just had to get it down before my viewing experience faded.
