Suspiria (1977)

Reviewed by: Emma

I don’t really watch horror movies. Nor have I updated this blog in say… many many months, possibly a year. However I just watched a movie by Dario Argento (the genius who directed Phenomena) and I can’t sleep. I think it’s because I’m scared shitless, to be honest. But also it could be because I just witnessed the best musical score for a movie ever (which added so much suspension I felt like I was being warped into my own brain with no way out), amazing art direction, fantastic and odd colours, it was like a surreal dreamscape. I’m not against realist movies, however I do tire of the ordinary. Ordinary cinematography, ordinary scenarios… albeit, with an interesting storyline, characters and dialogue this can be okay. That being said I’m not hugely into sci-fi fantasy films that are unrealistic in their use of props and whatnot. Dario Argento is a genius because he is a master of the surreal. I thought David Lynch was the King of surreal but I think I may be wrong here. No. There is a new king. HAIL the king. Ok sorry maybe I should talk about the movie.

The music, done by musical legends Goblin (awesome name if I may say so myself), create mood in this film. The colours, eye-popping literally, create a feeling of another world, or of a heightened sense of an experience. The master of surrealism is making something absurd believable. It’s about making the absurd subtle enough to be real… and to do that it takes mastery and finesse. For once in a film, I have not cared for acting or storyline. Not that the acting or storyline were bad, in fact I found it thrilling. “A young American ballet student comes to Germany to be a part of a royal academy, only to find out the teachers are part of a coven of witches hell bent on chaos and destruction.” That sounds pretty tasty to me, but my point is, the strength of this movie (and what makes it) is in the style of it. It’s like in a painting, when you create impressions to create a feeling. It’s almost instinctual. And I feel that this movie is a series of impressions, that impact on the mind and make you go “holy shit I’m so fucking scared and intrigued and I know it’s cuz of the music but I can’t help it, dammit.” or something along those lines.

What I find interesting, and disappointing, is that some people find satisfaction in calling this a bad movie. THESE PEOPLE ARE IDIOTS. They are idiots because they think a movie is all about being conventionally good. Now where’s the fun in that? I watch a movie to be taken into a whole other atmosphere and to be introduced to something I am not used to… seeing, believing, experiencing. To sum up this movie:

Magical, fucked up surreal fairytale, and chilling to the bone.

In the words of an imdb user,

“So sit yourself down, turn out the light, and watch this movie in surround sound, ’cause the music alone will totally give you the creeps.”

If you can handle not sleeping and refusing to turn out the lights, like me.

Imitation of Life (1959)

Reviewed by: Emma

We watched this film today in my “Film as Subversive Art” class. The best way I can describe it is hilarious, clever and tragic at the same time. The film follows the story of a white mother and daughter (Lora and Susie), who welcome a black mother and her daughter (Annie and Sarah Jane) into their home, because they are without a home. The black mother, Annie, ends up taking the role of Lora’s house maid, while Susie welcomes Sarah Jane instantly – excited to have a new friend, sharing her toys with Sarah Jane. At the beginning of the film we sense Sarah Jane’s embarrassment and shame of having a black mother, when she rejects Susie’s “black” doll, exclaiming that she wants the “white” one. This caused most people in the class to laugh, including me, however as the film progresses the issue becomes serious to the point of it creating painful and destructive problems. You would not expect the film to get as sinister as it does at certain points, all the while being able to get you to burst out laughing the minute afterwards due to some kind of sexist undertone remark. Lora is an aspiring actress, and she won’t give up her dream for anything, the only thing she loves more than her acting is her daughter Susie. Mr. Steve, a random man the family met on the beach, pines after Lora, and the film is successful in hilariously portraying the idea that a woman shouldn’t really aspire for anything, but should just give into a romantic relationship because “it’s all a woman needs”. The film essentially deals with racism, and it deals with Sarah Jane’s inability to accept the colour of her mother’s skin; Sarah Jane’s skin is white due to having an English (I think) father. This really is an amazing film, and it is probably one of the best ‘older’ films I have seen. I highly recommend it.

The Spirit of the Beehive (1973)

Reviewed by: Marty

Director: Victor Erice

Screenplay: Victor Erice, Angel Fernandez Santos

Cast: Ana Torrent, Fernando Fernan Gomez, Isabel Telleria, Teresa Gimpera

Music: Luis de Pablo

I’ve been taking a weekly film appreciation course for the past 10 weeks or so, and as an assessment we had to write an essay – not really with any salient direction – on one of the films we were shown over the duration of the course. A lot of good films were shown, especially some satirical Luis Bunuel, but it was The Spirit of the Beehive that captured me the most. We were told to explain in the essay why we thought the film was good or bad, and because of this review-esque mood of the essay I thought I might share it here. A word of warning – though the film doesn’t have much of a narrative, there are what some would consider spoilers within the essay.

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The Spirit of the Beehive, Spanish director Victor Erice’s 1973 debut feature, is a film of many facets. At once a political allegory, a statement on the breaking down of familial structures, and a ghost story through the eyes of a child, appreciation of the film’s layered, complex yet simple depth can linger in the viewer’s mind long after it has enchanted them with its beautiful visuals. Meditative and dreamlike, the film’s arresting imagery, cinematography and composition – alongside the laconic and sparse, yet savoured and ethereal lines of dialogue – creates a vivid, luminescent recreation of a world through the eyes of a young child, and establishes itself as an intensely alluring ode to the fantastical nature of the imagination, presented amongst the isolation of a country in the aftermath of internal unrest.

As the film opens, detailing the setting as an isolated – yet strangely beautiful – rural village ‘somewhere on the Castilian plain’, the primary characters are introduced in much the same manner as they are developed throughout the story. While sisters Ana and Isabel sit closely together in the makeshift movie theatre, whispering with wide eyes to each other, their father Fernando is first seen disguised by a beekeeper’s outfit, as he calmly tends to numerous boxes of bee-ridden honeycomb. Despite the metaphorical representation of Fernando the beekeeper, watching and exercising a kind of patriarchal position over his beehives as a father might over his family, father and daughters are rarely filmed in the same frame, creating an illusion of rifts amongst their family. Similarly, neither do Fernando and his wife Teresa share the screen together; Teresa’s first appearance shows her alone, writing a melancholic letter to an unnamed loved one, thoughts evidently far away from the confines of her family household. In one immaculately crafted scene, the camera focuses on Teresa in bed, who feigns sleep while Fernando rustles about the room, before lying down next to her – the latter never having been seen in the shot. Of all the instances in the film, only one involves the entirety of Ana and Isabel’s family: a breakfast of coffee and soup, while they sit facing each other at the table; however, Erice films each member separately, on their own in each shot. As the film continues this manner of displaying the characters in a state of isolation, it creates an affecting comment on the inner destruction of family units.

Alongside this portrayal of a family in the throes of separation, Erice, continuing his omnipresent metaphor of the nature of bees and the beehive, invokes a critique of post-civil war Spanish society in the throes of an oppressive dictatorship; an element that whilst remains relevant for Spanish audiences, can often be lost on foreign viewers. At the film’s core is a monologue that is narrated by Fernando as he paces his ornate room, staring into a glass case containing a hexagonal nest of bees, farming their honeycomb. The monologue mentions the beehive structure as being full of ‘relentless yet ineffectual toil’ and ‘repose of death’, while stating that anyone being presented with the image of this structure and its spirals of principles is bound to ‘recoil in horror’. Here Erice is comparing the suffocating, somewhat hopeless life inside an artificial beehive to living in Spain under the Francoist regime, a dictatorship that held Spain in oppression for several decades; this motif is implicit even deeper in the inclusion of a yellow stained-glass window with large hexagonal shapes adorning some of the doors in the family household. In one scene, Ana flips through her father’s scrapbook, and focuses upon a photo showing him with a figure of the Spanish resistance – a man who bravely opposed Francoist ideals. To Spanish audiences, this particular fragment, represented without any dialogue pertaining to who the man is or why he is significant enough to yield a close up on camera, would likely resonate with the history of internal bloodshed and societal poverty of Spain following the chaotic civil war of the 1940s; to international audiences, or the less educated, many allusions and indirect references such as this have an alienating effect. However, this does not necessarily diminish the quality of the content of the film, as it does not stand up only as a Francoist critique; it provides an example of the layered effect Erice achieves with the narrative. For instance, it is never made entirely clear whom the fugitive that takes refuge in the barn is, or what side of the government he is on, yet his character is important in both the political dimension and the narrative through the eyes of Ana, who sees him only as a mystical creature that haunts the abandoned building.

Perhaps the most evocative aspect of The Spirit of the Beehive comes from the deep gaze of Ana’s eyes, which linger on many things around her, often in states of wonder, curiosity, and gradual comprehension. The film is very much an attempt to bring back the viewer to his or her early childhood; to evoke their own personal recollections of how it felt to use imagination to such extent that it created images, connections and meanings in or outside reality that invite utmost belief and faith. From the moment she gasps at the footage of Frankenstein’s monster descending toward a little girl during the screening of James Whale’s silent film, Ana becomes a character that embodies this spirit of imagination, just as her imagination embodies spirits that she believes to be alive. It should be noted that in the film the term ‘ghost’ is meaningfully avoided in favour of ‘spirit’: there is close ties between life, death, spirituality and mysticism presented over the course of the narrative, and it seems the fulcrum of all these concepts, that which ties them together, is the term ‘spirit’. There is prayer in the bedroom at night as well as in a maths class at Ana and Isabel’s school; as a golden candle burns slowly in front of a religious image, Ana and Isabel discuss the existence of Frankenstein’s monster, or at the very least, the existence of his ‘spirit’. The juxtaposition of spirituality and Ana’s make believe ‘spirits’ – one in the frightening embodiment of Frankenstein’s monster towards the film’s close, one in the injured figure of the political fugitive, and, arguably, one in the eerie eyes of Don José, the anatomical mannequin at Ana’s school, which causes Ana to speak not a word – comes to a remarkable climax right before the film ends, as Ana wakes from her sleep to gaze up into the moonlit sky, and follows her sister’s spirit-awakening instructions to close her eyes and whisper, ‘It’s me, Ana’ – a perhaps irrevocable dichotomy, or paradox, of prayer and belief in that which does not exist in reality.

On surface level, however, what is at first so alluring about The Spirit of the Beehive is its mosaic of senses and atmosphere. Bathed in a warm yellow tinge, and exhibiting a musical score made up of traditional Spanish childrens’ tunes played on guitar and flute, the film is as rich with rusticity as the broken stone buildings it displays. Erice presents an overwhelming sense of spatial contrast between the claustrophobic, dankly illuminated confines of Ana’s family household, and the enormous open spaces of the Castilian grasslands. In the family manor, footsteps, particularly that of the father Fernando, thunder throughout the hallways in a low bass tone, often accompanied by silence. By candlelight, Ana and Isabel have many conversations at a barely audible whisper, but during the day, they scream and yell to fill the rooms of the large house with their spirits. When the shot cuts to images of the sisters outdoors, traversing the wide steppes, the sound of the wind, akin to the silence between the vacant stares and hard echoic floorboards of the childrens’ house, takes on its own character in the film, and becomes as meaningful and intentional as the smallest of gestures: a small grin on Ana’s face; Isabel gracefully applying blood as lipstick in a small mirror; the enigmatic sound of Fernando’s music-box pocket watch; or the erupting sound of a rock hitting water as Ana inspects the depth of the barnyard well.

On first viewing, one easily appreciates these often otherworldly scenes of serenity and isolated beauty, both full of and devoid of sound, but as the images linger in the mind, so do the subtle messages of the tumultuous consequences of war and the pain of a family that is as a torn photograph. Erice’s quiet, graceful masterpiece is art that not only presents a narrative interpretable in several ways, but a sensory experience that evokes a time and a childish joy that each of us recollect but seldom remember.

5 Centimetres Per Second (Byousoku 5cm)

Reviewed by: Marty

Director: Makoto Shinkai

Screenplay: Makoto Shinkai

Cast: Kenji Mizuhashi, Yoshimi Kondou, Satomi Hanamura

Music: Tenmon

If anyone is aware of ‘socially awkward penguin’ pictures – well, I’ll just assume no one reading this is, so I’ll explain them anyway. Basically it has a small picture of a penguin on a blue background with a sentence divided into two halves that describes an awkward situation nearly all of us are frighteningly familiar with. For example: “SEE PEOPLE YOU KNOW ON THE BUS – PRETEND TO NOT SEE BY THEM AND LOOK OUT THE WINDOW”. The genius behind them is that they’re often about stuff you don’t want to talk about or admit in real life – hence, pure awkwardness, and thus the nearly always negative connotations they arouse in your soul. There are hundreds of different ones, for all the different haunts of life, but the one I want to raise goes like this: “TELL EVERYONE YOU ARE AN ADULT – STILL WATCH ANIME”. How can I begin to process this? Initially it gave me the standard ‘socially awkward penguin’ feeling of, “oh, fuck, that’s me. how depressing”. However I’m not one to be put down by the internet, so I’m going to say this: the fact that many, basically a majority, think that if you watch cartoons or anime (the distinction people in general have between these two mediums also frustrates the hell out of me, but that’s another story) after you have ‘grown up’, you’re either a) weird, b) SOCIALLY AWKWARD or c) a nerd. So I will ask this: how can we reverse this perception? Miyazaki films, I think, help. However as anime can be generally categorised (ever so generally) as TV shows made up of giant robots, outlandish hair, big eyes, annoying voice acting, absurd high school antics and oversized breasts, I wonder if more ‘realistic’ anime can’t help the situation a little bit. This is where, for me, 5 Centimetres Per Second comes in.

5 Centimetres is split into three unevenly lengthened ‘acts’, following a male named Takaki Tono through three different stages of his life. In the first act, and probably the most lengthy, we learn that Takaki and a girl named Akari Shinohara, in their early teens at a school in the Tokyo area, have a tender, deeply mutual and wordless affection for one another. That’s really all there is to it, the heart of this film, and this is basically established simply by showing short vignettes of the two experiencing and enjoying everyday occurrences: watching the cherry blossoms falling (at 5 centimetres per second), talking in a cafe, reading in the library, catching the train. One day, Akari is forced to move away from Tokyo with her family, to a different province numerous train stops away. Unable to bear the distance between them, and unsatisfied by only writing each other constantly, Takaki prepares a trip out to the town where Akari eagerly awaits, but is burdened by several delays on his journey that gradually eat away at his emotional stability. In the second act, Takaki is older and no closer to Akari, and is attending a middle school away from Tokyo. He becomes an object of obsession for Kanae Sumida, a relatively grounded but shy and insecure girl who is into surfing. The act is seen from her point of view as she vies for Takaki’s affections, providing a great contrast to the previous act. The third act, by far the shortest, is an epilogue featuring Takaki’s young adult life, and shows his constant state of introspection and reflection as to how he fits into his life.

First and foremost, it must be mentioned: this movie is drop-dead gorgeous. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen; stunning, visually arresting, epic and so on so forth. It is hard to say anything else when you first see anything to do with this film, and I actually feel tripidation talking about the movie this way, because as we all know, a lot of things LOOK good, but often these things lack substance or anything that equals the achievement it gets by looking good. I am aware that a lot of acclaim this movie gets is for its animation and the design, rather than its screenplay or acting or whatever, and I’m okay with that, because I feel the plot/screenplay compliments its visuals, and vice versa.

The script is wonderfully sparse, yet at the same time it’s not. Heavily reliant on narration, the dialogue SOMETIMES gets a little too ‘obvious’ or over-emotional or angsty, and I do admit in some cases I wished less words had been said and more faith had been put into the audience’s interpretation. HOWEVER, there is still so much space, and the whole film has a lilting, meditative quality about it, not unlike wind blowing through grass. Those of Shinkai’s films I have seen, Voices of a Distant Star and The Places Promised in Our Early Days, seemed to suffer the same sort of ‘obvious’ and over-emotional dialogue lines (the films were overtly beautiful though), and it’s good to know that he’s come out with something a little more mature. Also, this is Shinkai’s first film that has almost no sci-fi setting – I say *almost* because there’s a pivotal scene involving a space shuttle being fired into the sky NASA-style, and a huge emphasis on watching it fly towards space. There’s nothing wrong with this – I love space – but it just might have been nice for there to be a Shinkai film that didn’t involve spaceships as important plot points, and have it kept a little closer to the ground realism-wise.

For me, the music caused my rating for this movie to slip away from the coveted 5-star. Tenmon I have never really found inspiring or terribly moving, but his music – even his name – is synonymous with Shinkai’s films, so there’s nothing that can be done about it. As a piano player I have my reasons: Tenmon’s touch on the piano can be a little bit too temperamental – although the sound is a lot better compared to the soundtrack to Shinkai’s earlier stuff – and the compositions are just pretty boring, using the same progressions, voicings and predictable harmony. Predictable harmony I have no problem with if the other two points can be improved. I’m being really elitist here, but sometimes when I heard his music put to some of the more romantic scenes in the movie I just felt ill. Also, there is a music video-esque reflection towards the end of the film put to a very, very bad pop song. I’m all for J-pop, but this song I fast fowarded most of, it was so bad. I’m so sorry for being so elitist like this.

The issue of the music aside, though, this film for me is like an amazing mixture of sound and visuals. It’s always a pleasure for me to hear Japanese people talk, and particularly in this film, the voice actors let their words flow over the film like water (whatever you do, DO NOT watch this film with the English dub). There’s all the standard melancholy you’d expect, but it’s very very beautiful, and full of truth. That’s the thing, I want to recommend this film to a lot of people, but…yes, it’s Japanese anime, yes, it’s got aspects of a stereotypical anime romantic storyline and a lot of the sappy bits that usually come with it; however that doesn’t mean it’s not truthful. As young teenagers, we feel our emotions ten-fold – especially love – because it’s our first real experiences with it. As we age, we learn to accept the distances that are created between ourselves, against our will or otherwise. For me, even if a lot of it’s below the surface (though that is my favourite place for these things in a film), this piece of art tells truths about love and affection, obsession, loss, time and – like basically everything I guess – the nature of humans. The subtitle to the film is “A Chain of Short Stories About Their Distance”, and it’s a great way to put it. Take the 63 minutes out to watch it, let it flow over you. Especially if you feel like giving anime a chance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxKn5AwOTis – a short trailer, fairly accurate preview of the film’s tone. The whole film IS on youtube, but because a lot of the film’s grandeur is its visuals, again I might have to recommend against that option…

Dark Horse (2005)

Reviewed by: Emma

So I was at Box Hill looking through a DVD sale bin where I once found a Syd Barrett documentary for $7, and on second rummaging I wasn’t expecting to find anything particularly interesting, since last time most of it was crappy Tom Cruise movies and bad children’s animes. However I stumbled across a movie called ‘Dark Horse’ which I had never heard of before, and after discovering it was Dutch and being intrigued by the cover, I knew I had to buy it to see if it was any good. It was $7, what could I lose?

Apart from the actual quality of the DVD being rather disappointing (slightly pixelated), I was joyed by this little film. It’s about a young adult graffiti artist called Daniel, who makes a ‘living’ by spray painting girls’ names around town for boyfriends who want to surprise their lovers. They’re done artistically and look really sweet. He has earned only a few dollars (literally) in the past 4 years from actual income. His “i don’t care about anything” attitude changes when he meets Francesca, a local bakery girl who has just been fired for being high on psychedelic mushrooms while attempting to sell baked goods.

This offbeat comedy surprised me with it’s street smart feel, edgy black and white cinematography and cool music (done by Icelandic trio Slowbow). This film doesn’t appear to be made on a high budget at all, and may inspire amateur filmmakers or those interested in making films to get out there and make something, because films like these show that money isn’t everything in making an interesting film.

Not the most riveting and interesting film out there, but just something pleasant and good for those “I want to watch a foreign film” moods. Also, for those who love Europe and have an interest in Denmark… Copenhagen looks like a cool place. Maybe I’ll have to stop over there on my visit next year.

Planet of the Apes (1968)

Reviewed by: Marty

Director: Franklin J. Schaffner

Screenplay: Michael Wilson and Rod Serling, from the novel ‘La Planéte des Singes’

Cast: Charlton Heston, Kim Hunter, Roddy McDowall, Linda Harrison, Maurice Evans

Music: Jerry Goldsmith

God, movies are so dumb these days. So much bite-sized information is crammed into every second that it’s almost as if we don’t have to use our minds anymore, we just sit there and switch off. There used to be a time – way back when – that we as filmgoers weren’t treated as though we had short attention spans, and things were revealed to us tantalisingly, in a very gradual manner. We used to be able to take delight in not knowing what was going on straight away, and the more we put the pieces together ourselves the better. This also warrants the beauty of seeing a film multiple times. Alas, those days are no more, and we’re none the wiser for it. The whole Planet of the Apes thing I had dismissed because once, a few years ago, I caught a few minutes of the Tim Burton remake on TV, and had to stop myself from being physically ill at the quality of it. So, I don’t know what came over me to hire out the original, other than my desire to find more good retro sci-fi films, with an actual capacity for thinking and interpreting, in the vein of Silent Running and 2001 (because I’m sure there are more out there). To summarise my reaction upon getting 15 or 20 minutes into the film, I was wholly surprised and captivated.

Most people who are half-familiar with pop culture and who have lived for over sixteen years will probably know some or all of the deal behind Planet of the Apes – intrepid spacenaut crash lands on a planet ruled by apes, where man is mute and treated as a beast; spacenaut escapes only to find that the planet is Earth 2000 years in the future (who could forget, or does not know of, that iconic last image of the severed Statue of Liberty lying upended on the shore, Heston kneeling in the foreground with his face in his hands?) – so I won’t go into too much detail. However, the storyline, and in particular the script, is where it really got me by the collar. The whole film, for me, more or less revolves around this one phrase of dialogue by protagonist Taylor (Heston): “I can’t help thinking that somewhere in the universe there has to be something better than man. Has to be.”

In the wake of pro-environmentalist – and almost anti-human – films, or rather preceding it, Planet of the Apes has probably got to be the most thought-provoking and interesting speculative film about the future of the human race. As you watch it, several ‘what if’ questions present themselves for mulling over: what if, in the far future, mankind wipes itself out and the race and species system is turned on its head? Is it unlikely that the human race will be extinct one day, either as a fault of their own or otherwise? What if there comes a time when all trace of human existence vanishes forever? The most troubling questions about human existence are touched upon in this remarkable film, despite the fact that it is a film about apes. It takes a truly talented storyteller to provide an unashamed criticism of the constant degradation of mankind and society using apes, that’s for sure. It all works so well – the religion and ancient scriptures the apes follow, the prejudices they hold against humans, and the way they believe their way of life is the predominant way of life on their planet eerily echoes the path of the human race from eons ago. The film had the tendency to frustrate me at times, but not at all in a bad way – the way the apes scoff at Taylor when they assume him to be an ugly, primitive, unintelligent mute beast is ironic as, frighteningly, the roles could be just as easily reversed. In fact, as the whole film is an oddity, in that apes could never be thought of as rulers over humans, would it be less odd for the roles to be reversed for the entire film? A planet where humans are the rulers and whom look down upon animals as beasts? The most daunting thing about the whole storyline – and what so much modern science fiction fails at conveying in a convincing manner – is the idea that humans are convinced they are very alone in the universe, when in fact they’re probably not; but as a result, all our milleniums of history and existence ultimately could mean nothing, and will have taught us nothing. Unless, of course, it’s all in our minds. Is there really a race out there that is better than man?

I’ll say it again, this film surprised me. It is truly amazing, underneath all the violence and action-as-entertainment. The things I’d pick apart would be the whole relationship between Taylor and Nova (Harrison), the mute human native, whose presence was rather unnecessary in the last act. Still, I guess it was interesting providing that whole human instinct for reproduction aspect, as the apes look upon humans as specimens. Of course, the whole film, effects-wise, is a bit outdated, and some of Heston’s outcries and lumbering actions seem a bit awkward by today’s standards, but it’s retro and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the makeup of the apes, because the area around the eyes and forehead was more or less left intact, and the resemblance to the human species could easily be seen – as well as a distinction between individual apes. There is so much that this film nailed; the soundtrack is superb, a refreshingly avant-garde and at times heavily dissonant range of sounds that never grates or gets in the way. It goes without saying that now that I’ve heard Goldsmith’s score for Chinatown and this one, I’m a huge fan of his work. The writing is snappy, from Heston’s iconic one liners (“Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!”"It’s a mad house!”) to the tense exchanges between the ape ‘heretics’ Zira and Cornelius (Hunter and McDowall) and the disgruntled but wise Dr. Zaius (Evans), particularly during the cross examination of Taylor scene. The things that will always haunt me about this film, though, lie in the chilling image of the Statue of Liberty lying ruined on the desolate shore (I don’t care how much I already knew about the ending to this film, it still gave me chills), and the words of the prophetic – and wholly truth-speaking – Dr. Zaius, as he reads from the Ancient Scriptures, perhaps the last record of human existence on Earth:

“Beware the beast Man, for he is the Devil’s pawn. Alone among God’s primates, he kills for sport, or lust, or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother’s land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him; drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death.”

“You are right, I have always known about man. From the evidence, I believe his wisdom must walk hand in hand with his idiocy. His emotions must rule his brain. He must be a warlike creature who gives battle to everything around him, including himself.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvR2mCx-Jnc – the original 1968 trailer. strange and overdramatic, but what can you do. it was 1968.

BONUS TRIVIA: Tim Burton’s remake is shithouse. I’m not sure about the quality of the sequels and spinoffs, ‘Beneath the Planet of the Apes’, ‘Escape from the Planet of the Apes’ and ‘Battle for the Planet of the Apes’, although I’d like to think of the ending of the original as the final, hopeless, depressing chapter.

Perfect Blue (1998)

Reviewed by: Marty

Director: Satoshi Kon

Screenplay: Sadayuki Murai, from the novel by Yoshikazu Takeuchi

Cast: Junko Iwao, Rika Matsumoto, Bridget Hoffman (English version), Wendee Lee (English version)

Music: Masahiro Ikumi

“excuse me, who are you?”

OK, before I start reviewing this, there’s something I have to say – Roger Carman? Yeah, I saw your quote on the front cover of the DVD. But let me tell you something. Your quote indicates that you seem to think that this film is somewhat of a hypothetical lovechild that Alfred Hitchcock and Walt Disney would have fathered together, had they lived to see its release (or development)…yet, there is nothing in this film that signifies any salient characteristic that those directors are known for. How did you figure that this movie – which, in a nutshell, is graphically violent, sexually disturbing, and psychologically tormenting – could possibly have been even tolerated by either Walt or Hitch? Oh. I think I understand. You think this is a cartoon, don’t you. Once you saw this was an animated feature, your thought processes instinctively led to the most cliché of all animation-oriented filmmaker clichés, and once you saw it in the ‘thriller’ category, your thought processes led to the most cliché of all thriller-oriented filmmaker clichés. I know your type. Enjoy your cartoons, Roger, I’m off to enjoy a decent slice of filmmaking art.

Perfect Blue, a name which may or may not mean anything in relation to the film, is about Mima Kirigoe (Iwao/Hoffman), a J-pop ‘idol’ who, perhaps solely on account of her managers Rumi (Matsumoto/Lee) and Tadokoro, trades in her music career to pursue acting. Die-hard fans of Mima’s pop group CHAM are generally disappointed, if a little scathing, but there appears to be someone a little too obsessed with Mima’s idol image, and begins to terrorise Mima by gradually sabotaging her new career path using increasingly violent means. As Mima falls deeper into confusion as to whether her identity as a celebrity is better off through music or television, she convinces herself that she is being hunted by the ghost of her former self – an illusion created simultaneously by her dangerously vengeful fan and her fear that she should have stayed in music – and begins to teeter on the edge of insanity.

As much as the story is superb and twisted as it is, the way it’s told makes it even more astounding. Using flashback after flashback and even segments of Groundhog Day-esque déja vu, the presence of time in the film is hugely unstable, mimicking much of Mima’s mental state, particularly towards the last third of the film. I’ve tried to give away the least amount of plot information as possible while still making it intriguing, but this is a film that you have to see maybe more than once to understand how complex and well-spun it is.

Although the animation is so well done that often the film feels just like a live action feature (although admittedly a little outdated by today’s standards), the idea that it’s animated allows Kon to pile on the psychological puzzlement by truly blurring the line between fantasy and reality, outside and inside Mima’s mind. As Mima is subjected to degrading act after degrading act, all in the name of becoming a respected actress, we follow the falls her perspective takes as she hallucinates and finds herself victim to her own paranoia. Whether the evils that befall Mima – or even Mima’s actions in everyday life – are real or not are never explicitly established. If this film comments on anything, it’s a toss up between the loss of privacy and identity when you become a household name, and the psychological effects of paranoia, loss of identity, and, ultimately, jealousy. It goes quite some way down the rabbit hole, and there’s nothing nice to be found there at all.

I couldn’t find much to disagree with on this film, but I will say that the twist that the end provides seemed a bit strange and underdeveloped. Even though the film was just over 80 minutes, there were more than a few opportuities to inflate the impact of the ending, but the film concentrates all its might on Mima’s character – which is only a bad thing in this area. I’d be interested to read the novel, but I’m not sure if there’s an English translation yet or not. On the upside, the length of the film means that it doesn’t dawdle or concentrate on red herrings anywhere. Every scene has something significant about it, and the moments of silence and emptiness are perfectly sung. Speaking about singing also, the soundtrack is amazing, in particular the track “Virtua Mima”. Bridging electronica, ambient and experimental, it’s quite a unique sound and fits the film snugly.

See this film if you appreciate good animation, incredible storytelling, or some good old mindfuck. It’s a great film, no matter how you look at it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0Rj7nn0ZVs&feature=related – English language trailer featuring ROGER CARMAN’s famous quote and a narrator with a voice five octaves below Barry White.

BONUS TRIVIA: Darren Aronofsky spent $59,000 just so he could steal one scene from this film – here is a comparison image. Well done, Aronofsky *claps*

Drop Dead Fred (1991)

Reviewed by: Emma

Ok so first and foremost, this is a children’s movie (mainly). But I think a woman  of any age could enjoy it. I say woman because all the guys I’ve talked to have disliked this movie, probably because it has a “who needs that douche” message in it and is mainly about making a girl feel better. Ok so it’s quite cheesy and can be stupid. But I love it. It’s one of those movies that critics will call shit but if you’re watching it for other reasons then it can be really great.

Most importantly, it has Rik Mayall (from The Young Ones)… I love this man, he’s so funny and ridiculous. Sort of like a more exaggerated version of Dylan Moran and quirkier. In it, he plays ‘Drop Dead Fred’, the imaginary friend of a young girl, Elizabeth. But let’s skip to the future first. Lizzie is a grown woman, she has a job, a car and a husband. Soon we find out that the husband is a douche, and has left her for some slut. Shortly after Lizzie loses her car and job. All of a sudden she’s back at home with her horrible mother (referred to by Drop Dead Fred as the ‘megabeast’ or ‘megabitch’, which is quite hilarious).

Life seems to be carrying on sadly for Lizzie without her beloved douche husband. She’s in her old room with her old pink walls and a life without a man. This unsettles her. But what’s this? Drop Dead Fred appears. And suddenly a voyage of self-discovery and realisations begin to happen, and Lizzie remembers who she is, who she was a child and why that is so important. This movie, though silly at times, is thoroughly enjoyable and it deeply moved me. I cried. Yes… laugh if you will (for all you male skeptics out there! You just don’t understand because you’re not a girl. And you don’t seem to have those nostalgic childhood things that we do. No offense, Alpha-males. Wait do alpha-males use the internet? Anyway…)

I ended up buying this because I plan on watching it whenever I am sad/lonely/pissed off at failed relationships. And it reminds me of being a child, and how it’s so important to remember that you were once innocent, and how you can be innocent again. I actually wish I had Drop Dead Fred as a friend. I’m so lame sometimes. See this movie if you’re a girl. Do it.

– This movie is rated on how it made me feel.

And let us all brace ourselves for the 2011 Russell Brand remake.

P.S. I forgot to mention that Pheobe Cates is absolutely gorgeous. A real classic beauty, I’d say. She’s one of those people in films you love because they’re so pretty and can actually act. Ha.

Paranormal Activity (2007)

Reviewed by: Marty

Director: Oren Peli

Screenplay: Oren Peli

Cast: Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat, Mark Friedrichs

I watched The Blair Witch Project towards the start of this year and, despite (or perhaps because of) all the hype and ‘no don’t watch that it’s too scary’-s issued from people I know, I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed (although it WAS quite scary, a good kind of slow-burning psychological scary, and the ending was terrifying). However, on reflection, it’s made damn well, even on such a tight student filmmakers’ budget. So after seeing Paranormal Activity and being well frightened by it, it got me to thinking that maybe these super-low-budget horror films are the only films that really get inside you and make you afraid, if primarily because they don’t rely on effects and buckets of gore to be ‘scary’ – they seem real, human, and almost entirely believable.

Paranormal Activity sees ‘engaged to be engaged’ couple Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat (both use their real names in the film) investigating strange happenings in their house, via a high-tech camera bought by Micah. Although Micah is the most flippant and immature of the couple, he is determined to capture on film what could be making the strange bumps and scratches sometimes heard during nighttime, while Katie takes the cautious view of the whole thing, inviting a psychic (Friedrichs) into their house for a day to deduce some sort of meaning from the activity. She explains to the psychic that the ‘haunting’ has been persuing her since she was 8 years old, to which he replies that she is beset by a demonic presence that feeds off negative energy, and will follow her for an indeterminate amount of time. Each night, Micah sets up a rig in front of their bed ready for the paranormal activity to be captured in the act, and it is here that most of the action unfolds, through a night-vision-style camera lens with the current time at the bottom right. As the days and nights roll by, events predictably escalate: at first, the presence is almost playful, simply playing with doors and walking aimlessly in the dark rooms, unseen by the camera. Gradually, however, Katie’s intolerance of Micah’s flippant understanding of the whole ordeal – Micah often goes to lengths to encourage the presence – creates an increase of ‘negative energy’ between the two, and as such, the paranormal activity becomes more and more frequent and increasingly hostile: a photograph of the couple is smashed and Micah’s face appears torn; an Ouija board bursts into flames; doors are slammed all over the house. The film hurtles towards a climactic finale, but unfortunately comes up with an abrupt ending that seems to be a bit of a cop-out.

The ending, as is the case with a lot of horror films that think up a great premise but have no idea how to conclude it compellingly, did let the film down a great deal. Up until the final 10 or so minutes, the pace is set unbelievably well, through a series of escalating spooks that you always know are coming but can never tell just how they come; the ending betrays this by hardly explaining just why all the haunting occurred, and reverting into something unbelievable, just when the whole film did so well in making itself as believable as possible. The ending was like something out of White Noise or some shit. I’ve read that there’s been a few different versions of the film shown around during its early release stage, which featured a different ending – I won’t make comparisons because I want to avoid as many spoilers as possible, but the ‘original’ ending sounded a lot more compelling.

Paranormal Activity, however, got so much right, and although this is kinda weird, it actually made me very happy that I was a bit afraid to go to sleep last night. For one thing: the decision to do the whole view-from-the-handheld-camera thing. Some films absolutely butcher this type of filmmaking (HELLO CLOVERFIELD!) but here it is actually effective, and suits the film very well. There’s hardly any nauseating shaky-camera bits, and as most of the eerie happenings occur beside the bed, the camera is stationary and immovable: tied to the tripod. This evokes an interesting feeling of dread whenever Micah goes to pick the camera up and inspect the rest of the house whenever a loud thud or door slam was heard, as we never know what’s waiting down in the darkened living room or in the rest of the deserted house.

Of course, nothing horrifying is ever seen, save for the strange inhuman footprints left in baby powder and the other miscellaneous bumps in the night. This is a popular staple of ghost-related horror, yet I’ve not been made aware of many movies that actually employ it for the whole film as effectively as this one – this is the point at which Poltergeist failed miserably in my opinion, despite all the critics that raved about it. PA is claustrophobic to the extreme: the couple cannot run away from the presence, as it is apparently attached to Katie and not the house, and there are only so many rooms in the house, making nowhere a safe haven. Even though there are occasional paranormal things happening during the day about halfway through the film, when the sun goes down, the level of paranoia and sheer fear is automatically increased tenfold: the film’s essential comment is on the vulnerability of sleeping at night. There is no music, and there doesn’t need to be: the sound department does a great job of maximising the impact of the eerie sounds heard throughout the house, although during the nighttime scare sequences I thought it might have been a bit more effective to do without the low rumbling ambience. Unless that was the sound of the demon’s presence, or whatever. That strange rumbling ambience continued for a while after the screen went black and the lights in the cinema came on as well – was there something I missed at the end? Guess I’ll never know, I was a bit too creeped out to see if there was something horrifying waiting for me.

So while the acting may be a little on the side of amateur, the percentage of delightful couple banter and unnecessary conversation in the film’s exposition being a bit too large, and the amount of scares not really…well…amounting to anything, Paranormal Activity is a really well made film. I loved that the ‘horror’ was not really ‘horror’ at all – the film unfolds on a slow burn, and the amount of tension during the silences before the storms is so fucking thick you could build a wall out of it. I really enjoyed this, for all its shortcomings, and it’s reignited a lifetime of my fears of things-that-go-bump-in-the-night, so, thank you, Paranormal Activity.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSkjaAD6mYw – official trailer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSSqxrh5kp8 – official AMERICAN trailer. bit of a gimmick/exaggeration if you ask me, the other one’s better.

Sakuran (さくらん) (2006)

Reviewed by: Marty

Director: Mika Ninagawa

Screenplay: Yuki Tanada, from the manga by Moyoco Anno

Cast: Anna Tsuchiya, Kippei Shiina, Hiroki Narimiya, Yoshino Kimura

Music: Ringo Shiina

First and foremost, probably the only reason why I went out of my way to tape Sakuran on SBS2 was that Ringo Shiina wrote the music for it, and I was interested to see how one of my favourite musicians, adept seemingly only in songwriting, would fare with scoring a film. Of course, instead of the score being a lush and epic orchestral one – which you would have normally expected it to be if you looked at a still or trailer of the film – Ringo’s voice appears a lot in it, which ended up suiting both her writing style and the vibe of the film. But this isn’t a music blog, is it?

Sakuran details the lives of the Chrysanthemum House’s many courtesans, in particular the life span of Kiyoha (Tsuchiya), a rebellious and stubborn girl, who was sold to the House as a young child. Despite her mischievous exploits as she grows up, she serves as a maid to the almighty oiran of the house – that is, the highest rank of courtesan, and the most popular and beautiful – until she herself is old enough to be initiated into courtesan-hood. Before long she finds herself falling in love with a seemingly faithful customer named Sojiro (Narimiya), however events in a feudal-era Japanese courtesan house, if anyone who has read ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’ would be aware, are hardly ever empathetic to their employees, and as Kiyoha’s lover disappears from her, she becomes hardened to every pain that befalls her, until her transition into immoral, indifferent mistress becomes complete, and she is elevated to oiran status.

In the tradition of films with not too much plot and lots of stunning visuals here at Movie-Quatic, here is a film with not too much plot and lots of stunning visuals. In all seriousness though, the plot in this film wasn’t actually too bad – it just moved way too slowly, and never really got anywhere. It lacked the epic integrity of something like Memoirs of a Geisha (sorry to keep refrencing that, it’s just the obvious comparison for a film like this; the film adaptation of Memoirs was pretty average in any case) and in terms of character development, Kiyoha was basically too unbelievable. The courtesans weren’t geishas, I gather, but they almost seemed to be semi-geishas, or closer to modern-day gyaru: adorned by piles of combs with jewel hangers and gigantic hair chopsticks, but also outlandish eyelash extenders and massive false nails with decorations on them. Sure, all this peering into the luxury-ridden lifestyle of old Japan is interesting, but I don’t think it was too accurate – and to address the original point of this paragraph, it seemed like it sacrificed its plot to make way for how the film looked. The acting, too, was incredibly low standard, particularly by Kuranosuke (Shiina).

Kiyoha, as a young girl, vowed to escape the Chrysanthemum House and the life of a courtesan, but as she becomes an oiran – a position which probably fit her well because of her take-all nature – she seems to love the attention and being at the mercy of all who work below her. Perhaps, then, Sakuran is a study of Tsuchiya’s character, which seems to almost be interesting: Kiyoha goes through so many moods and dispositions that it’s really quite hard to know what she really wants and what she really thinks about herself. This makes it a bit difficult to sympathise with her character overall. It’s obvious that she’s troubled in her life as a female servant, but just when she seems ready to snap, all of a sudden the film cuts to a scene of immense tranquil beauty, where Kiyoha is seated beneath a blooming sakura at night, or something along those lines, appearing serene and wise. She would be an interesting person to study if she wasn’t so frustrating to watch. Not to mention the fact that she is only half-Japanese, and it certainly is noticeable – in many scenes, she bears a striking (or disturbing) resemblance to Angelina Jolie.  BUT that’s a racial discussion of which I won’t go into, because she was mostly beautiful anyway.

Of course, the film looks amazing. The colours are definitely the stand-out point for this film: delightful cocktails of scarlet red, gold, light blue and pink abounds, and when the oiran that precedes Kiyoha, Takao (Kimura), happens upon the wrong end of a throat-cutting, the blood that splashes the walls and tatami is almost beautiful and artistic. The framing is commendable, be it Kiyoha waking up to a field of sakura beneath her window, or a lone tree covered with snow framed in the roofed walkways between sections of the Chrysanthemum House.

So, in conclusion, I’ll just say that this film was great to look at for a while, but I found myself becoming frustrated with it within a very short time – something that doesn’t usually happen very often when I sit down to watch a film. It tried to be beautiful and bittersweet, but it just ended up being exactly what its protagonist, Kiyoha, essentially was – a troubled individual with nowhere to go. Oh, but the music – yes, the music was amazing. In itself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRH_GYnx9IQ&feature=related – a mash-up of clips from the film put to the song ‘Gamble’ by Ringo Shiina, probably the best track off the film’s soundtrack, played when Kiyoha is paraded down the street as an oiran. the version in the film was much more grungy.