Silence: 'I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House'

Isn't silence scarier than noise? Especially when you're in a big house alone, or almost alone.

Osgood Perkins, son of famous actor Anthony Psycho Perkins, makes his directorial debut with I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, a slow-burning gothic ghost/haunted house story. Moving to the other end of the spectrum from the screeching, jump-cuts of movies like The Conjuring or Insidious, Pretty Thing is a quiet, delicate thing of beauty. Modern American audiences would no doubt find it 'boring' and 'slow' but the slower and quieter it got, the more it unnerved me.

The simple set up is that Lily (Ruth Wilson, like an older, timid Emma Stone) is a live-in nurse who moves into the large isolated home of an elderly author (Paula Prentiss) known for her mystery/thriller novels. Lily is nervous and lonely and soon to be enthralled with uncovering why her almost catatonic patient keeps referring to her as 'Polly' and why she keeps hearing voices and thumping noises in the house.

The imagery and set design in the film is impeccable. The interiors and natural lighting are clean and crisp (sunny entryways, white-washed wood) or faded and decaying (molding walls, grimy wallpaper) depending on location of the characters and time of day. The CGI is kept to a minimum and beautifully evocative (see the above ghostly trailed image). Faded, foggy, muted, shadowy; these adjectives describe the film well.

I see references to Kubrick and Polanski, on a shoestring budget, and flashes of films like The Tenant, The Changeling, The Shining, The House of the Devil, but much more sedated. Discoveries of turned over rugs, bubbling paint on walls, growing black mold, upside down chairs are all the more effective when the horror seems mundane and not doled out in jump scares. It's like the anti-Crimson Peak.

The one edit I would make is to strip back some of the voice over narration. The intro/outro are nice, but there seems to be a bit too much throughout. Really capitalizing on those long stretches of silence that do exist in the film are what drew me in to this ghostly vibe wholeheartedly.

Back to Drama: Almodovar's return with 'Julieta'

The great Spanish director Pedro Almodovar has returned to the world of drama after a brief dalliance with his raucous origins. After the fluffy, fun romp of 2013's I'm So Excited! (an odd retitling of the Spanish language version: Los Amantes Pasajeros), I feel like Almodovar wanted to get back to the serious drama that has fueled his most recent work.

2016's Julieta definitely brings us back to his world of women, family, motherhood, distance, and tragic romance. Based on three separate short stories by Canadian writer Alice Munro, Julieta is about a woman trying to reconnect with the daughter that disappeared from her life years and years ago.

I don't want to give away to much of the plot here. It'll help keep the low-key magic alive, as this puzzle starts to come together and reveal more about Julieta (played by two different actresses at two stages of her life) and her daughter Antia.

The story is very muted and melancholy, a far cry from his bubbly last film and the films at the beginning of Almodovar's history.

Beautiful images abound that make it feel like a waking, walking dream: The slo-mo shot of a stag chasing a train through a snowy landscape; Julieta and her husband Xoan making love on a fishing boat bobbing in the sea; Julieta visiting a spiritual retreat in the forested Pyrenees mountains.

This was set to be the director's first English-language film with Meryl Streep in the lead role, but the plan was scrapped and switched to a Spanish, not Canadian, location. I wonder if Almodovar should or could make something out of Spain and in another language. I have to ask, why should he? He is the master of detailing modern Spanish life.

Almodovar himself said:

"I didn't want tears, what I wanted was dejection. I adore melodrama, it's a noble genre, a truly great genre, but I was very clear that I didn't want anything epic, I wanted something else. Simply put, this had to be a very dry, tearless film"

That really explains the vibe of Julieta. And with all the heartache and loss throughout the film, the ending, a bit of an emotional cliffhanger where the future isn't spelled out, is truly hopeful.

Chug-a-Lug, Donna: 'Twin Peaks - Fire Walk with Me'

With all the hub-bub going around about the new season of Twin Peaks starting up again this May, I thought it was a good time to rewatch the entire series and the prequel standalone film Fire Walk with Me, before the series starts again in two months.

If you're curious, there's been a new Blu-Ray release of the entire series + Fire Walk + a bonus collection of 90 minutes of deleted scenes from the filming of Fire Walk; it's good preparation for the 18-episode season to come.

After the failed whimsy, the quirky soap operaness of the second half of Season 2, it's quite a jarring moment to be thrown into the darkness that is Fire Walk. As you can see in the deleted scenes from the film, most of the lightweight characters and storylines from the TV show have been axed to focus on Laura Palmer's (Sheryl Lee) immediate story; it's what makes for such a dark ride.

If the structure of the film seems weird, don't worry; it is. David Lynch envisioned three Twin Peaks movies and wanted to introduce a slew of characters into this first film as an intro. Lynch seems to be a "shoot a lot first, edit later" type of director.

The first 30 minutes follows two FBI detectives (Chris Isaak and Keifer Sutherland) following the case of the murder of Teresa Banks, a hooker/waitress and first victim of Leland Palmer. We also get introduced to Philip Jeffries (David Bowie), a mentally unstable detective returning to FBI HQ after a two-year absence. Although it's a sliver of a cameo in Fire Walk, we get another five or so minutes of screentime with Bowie in the deleted scenes, which still barely illuminates his storyline. Apparently he was the focus of the third potential Twin Peaks movie. Also, the Jeffries character was written in to the new season of the show but Bowie was too ill to film anything before he died.

But Sheryl Lee is really the central character/actor of the story and she carries the movie; I don't believe I've seen an actress cry and scream and shiver more. The film suffers a bit from a lack of levity - what shocked moviegoers when it was released after the show ended - but that's really not what Fire Walk is about.

Seedy, dark, depressing, and full of dread, Lynch ratchets up the tension as the story goes on. And since this is the prequel to a story we already know the ending to, it makes it all the more gut-wrenching to see Laura's final days.

Not for the faint of heart, but definitely inappropriately maligned when it was released, I have a feeling this film will be what the new season on Showtime will resemble, more so than the madcap antics of Season Two. With no commercial breaks and no major network rules hanging overhead, Season 3 may have a touch of the darkness and esoteric oddness of 2006's Inland Empire, his last feature film.

We have two more months before we start to find out. Put on your Julee Cruise records again.

Chump is Steff: the President was in 'Pretty in Pink'

Not to get all political, but why not. It's 2017 and it's almost prom season.

Last year was the 30th (thirtieth!) anniversary of John Hughes' teen drama classic Pretty in Pink. And although the center of the film is, was, and always will be Molly Ringwald giving full thrift shop, indie record shop eclectic diva, there always had to be a villain.

Enter Steff McKee (James Spader), a be-suited, slow talking, overtanned wastrel with no redeeming qualities who apparently has no responsibilities but spending money (his and other peoples'). "Do you think I'd treat my parent's house this way if money was any issue?"

Sounds like a certain future Chump in Chief we know.

Peruse the "Steff Edit" above, a megamix of shitty things Spader spouts out in Pink as he drunkenly stumbles around the scenery of this John Hughes melodrama.

As with Chump, Steff has a way with the ladies (see above image). Aside from his girlfriend Benny who he refers to as "worthless" in front of her face, Steff has a fixation on Andie, Ringwald's character. Throughout the movie he refers to her as a: "bitch," "nada," "piece of low-grade ass," and "mutant," among other things. But that doesn't mean he isn't entranced by the magic of Molly.

If Spader was playing a teenage Trump, for the sake of this argument, let's say Molly is playing a cooler teenage Hillary Clinton; she's independent, headstrong, opinionated, and coming from working-class roots. Steff/Trump hates that in a woman.

He wants a subservient Melania/Benny, but knows the real strength, intelligence, and interest lies in someone like Hillary/Andie. Too bad he can never have her, much to his secret angst.

Let Blaine (Andrew McCarthy) in all his bad hairdo glory break it down for you/Steff:

Hi Jacks - 'Jackie' and a Non-Linear Hollywood Narrative

I had reservations about seeing the quasi-biopic Jackie at all. It seemed like Oscar-bait, well-worn territory we've seen dozens of times before, for decades. So I brushed it off.

Looking for something reflective last night, I finally watched it and am happy to be proven wrong. Pablo Larrain Matte's Jackie is no ordinary, TV Movie of the Week melodrama. It's stark, despite its lush interiors, and quiet, despite its subject matter's prominence in history (the days after JFK's assassination).

What sets it apart from the run-of-the-mill biopic is not only it's slice of a very short period of time (not the usual birth-to-death, old-school biopic) but more importantly and strikingly, it jumbles the order of every scene in the movie. Past, present, and immediate future are jumbled up, scene-to-scene. Events from before and after the assassination are placed in a hypnotically odd order, framed by a story of Jackie Kennedy (Natalie Portman) giving her take on life after Jack to a somewhat belligerent journalist (Billy Crudup).

Portman, and her breathy, babydoll, New England accent, seemed forced to me in trailer clips, but it works better in context of the whole film. Stunning looking, as always, Portman gives a wounded, stunned and stunning performance as Jackie, from tears and dazed looks to determination.

Another triumph of the movie is the beautiful, melancholic score by the young British artist Mica Levi; her score is haunting, minimal, and slightly off-kilter, different from the usual glossy, syrupy, string-soaked orchestral scores that are used for most biopics. It's one of the things that sets Jackie apart from the pack, and sometimes turns your assumptions of familiar tropes on their head.

Greece: The Before Trilogy 3: 'Before Midnight'

Well I think I'll throw the idea of spoilers out the window when talking about The Before Trilogy, Richard Linklater's series following the romance of an American/French couple, Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy). Even from the still shot above, you can tell this couple that met for one day in 1995, reunited for one day in 2004, have chosen to be together long-term, as we follow them in this 2013 film.

When we left off at the end of Before Sunset, the middle film in the series, we were in Celine's apartment in Paris and Jesse agreed to miss his flight back to America and back to his wife and son. Fast forward nine years and Celine and Jesse are now a permanent couple with two young daughters, living in Paris but vacationing in Greece.

Where as the first two films were about the connection of young love, the longing, the loss when parting, and the magic of reconnecting with someone you thought you'd never see again, Before Midnight shows us something more mundane and real: life beyond the fairytale romance.

This is the couple, presumably married but not stated, talking about child care and juggling work with family time, and the problems of mid-career, early forty-somethings. Not the glowing sunsets of Paris or twinkling mornings of Vienna, huh?

But we get something deeper here and more middle-aged. The non-glamorous realities of making a relationship work for not just years, but decades. It doesn't hurt that the audience gets to languish in the summer glow of the Greek islands.

Hawke and Delpy, once again, have grown even better as actors and writers in the past decade. The dialogue is smarter and more pointed, and the realism more...realized. The final third of the film takes place between the two of them (after interactions with minor characters in the story for the first two-thirds) in a hotel room. It's a loose, smart, stinging, mean, sobering, and sometimes funny dialogue between a couple at odds with what they want for themselves as a couple and as individuals. It reminded me of some of Cassavetes work with his wife Gena Rowlands onscreen in his own films.

The conclusion of the film is open-ended, once again left on a cliffhanger choice of where they're going as a couple. As this is a trilogy, some may think the series is over. While others think it may pick up again in nine years (that's 2022, if you're counting) with a fourth segment (a quadrilogy film that isn't in the realm of science fiction; rare!)

At that point the leads would be in their early 50s. Where could they be - Paris, their current home; Chicago, where Jesse can be close to his now teenage son from his first marriage? Somewhere else? With someone else?

Are they still together? Separated? Divorced? These are things that Delpy, Hawke, and Linklater need to workshop and hash-out, as they do years before the completed film is released.

The cult is growing though; this film made three times as much as its predecessor, with another Oscar nom for screenplay, and a Golden Globe nom for Delpy as Best Actress.

A journalist asked Hawke in 2014, after the release of Before Midnight, about the continuation of the series. Hawke said:

“The second film was a call, the third film was an answer. I feel that if there were a fourth film, it would be starting a second trilogy, or it would be some new call-and-response.”

Paris: The Before Trilogy 2: 'Before Sunset'

In a post last week, I spoke about Before Sunrise, the first of three movies in Richard Linklater's Before trilogy, that has now been collected and remastered by Criterion. Be sure to read the post linked in the previous sentence before continuing on. I'll try and avoid spoiler-ish language.

The second installment in this trilogy, Before Sunset - Is it just a trilogy? We'll get to that in the next post about the Before series - is a continuation of the story of Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy), two young lovers who met on a train heading to Vienna nine years before the events in this story.

Jesse - the brash, romantic dreamer - has become an author since the events in the first film. He lives in NYC with a wife and young child and is on a European book tour for his novel, a fictionalized version of his date with Celine.

Speaking of, she still lives and works in Paris and the Paris date of Jesse's book tour is where their reunion occurs. They only have an hour and half our so left before Jesse has to catch his plane back to the U.S. and to his family. The couple once again wander through a beautiful European city, discussing their lives, their loves, and what they've been up to for nine long years.

Hawke and Delpy co-wrote the film with director Linklater, and were Oscar-nominated for their work. You can feel the lived-in vibe of the conversations they have as thirtysomethings reconnecting.

Where the first movie had a dewy twentysomething romantic longing vibe, knowing that the two lovers are fighting a clock's time running out, Sunset has a different twist. There is a time-is-running-out element of a plane to catch, but also the reward of finding each other again after nearly a decade apart.

Hawke and Delpy have become better actors in the intervening years, and maybe a tad more cynical, but it all propels the film to a smart conclusion: another possibility to move forward, another choice that changes their direction in life.

The short film, only 80 minutes, occurs almost in real time. There's a real rush to inform, a rush to get everything in to words that these two reconnected romantics have been holding out on.

Knowing this is the middle section of a trilogy and that another decade will have to take place before the next  installment, is both exciting and frustrating. Where will two lovebirds move on to now that their fairytale has come full circle and they've been reunited?

Pagan Cage: 'The Wicker Man' and a Remake of a Remake

Here is the trailer for the unsettling and spectacular 1973 British cult thriller/horror movie The Wicker Man:

And the trailer for the misbegotten American remake from 2006, starring an aimless, horribly miscast Nicholas Cage:

Butchery anyone? The original British film, based on a late '60s novel called Ritual, concerns an uptight, upright Christian police sergeant named Howie (Edward Woodward) searching for a missing girl on Summerisle, a remote island off the coast of Scotland. The inhabitants of Summerisle have abandoned Christianity in favor of a nature-centric paganism, much to the intense distrust of Howie.

No spoilers, but the film centers around the island's nefarious leader, Lord Summerisle (a fantastic turn by horror stalwart Christopher Lee) and his desire to keep the island's fruit harvest going strong, year after year. It's the lifeblood of the island. To keep this going, sometimes there needs to be sacrifice. Or "a" sacrifice, if you will. One Christian prig vs. an island of pagan men, women,and children, ready to protect at a moment's notice. Do the math.

This cult film about, well, a UK cult in the free love, hippie dippie early '70s is the major hook for this film. A series of folk song performances scattered throughout almost turn it into an odd, colorful musical about worshiping nature's power, even at the expense of killing people who get in the way.

The film is a sharp, slow burn, seemingly frolicsome and harmless at first but with a sinister undercurrent (I suppose depending on your religious affiliation) of one faith trumping another. It's truly an original and stunning feature that was highly underrated for decades.

Then in the mid-'00s, playwright Neil LaBute decided to write and direct a remake of the film as a sort-of misogynist (on purpose?) reframing of the story, with Summerisle being almost entirely populated by females, and, we discover, an island of Salem witch ancestor escapees.  

I guess that fuels Cage's over-the-top performance (see the above "Best of" clips reel, where this horror movie is easily recut as an unintentional comedy) and has him punching out, shoving, slapping, shaking, and knocking over most of the main female characters in the film. They do exact their sweet revenge by forcing hundreds of bees into a helmet over Cage's face, stinging him repeatedly as punishment for this remake being made.

Although a small indie "companion piece"/non-sequel/non-remake titled The Wicker Tree (2012) -written and directed by the original film's Robin Hardy - was released, it didn't get much attention. It was seen as an adequate but unimpressive continuation.

Is 11 years to early to start a remake of a remake? Although there are successful, raw, and tantalizing shades of The Wicker Man in Ben Wheatley's terrifying 2011 film Kill List, what if Wheatley did a full-on remake of the original? Or maybe Sean Durkin, the director of the dread-filled, cult escapee indie Martha Marcy May Marlene, tried his hand at it?

Or for the remake-abhorrent, how about a new take on the tale of an isolated cult being accessed by an interloper? What if the cult was anti-technology, pro-back to nature survivalists housed in a pleasant world of nouveau hippie smiles and Father John Misty folk tunes? There could be chilling power in that version.

Vienna: The Before Trilogy 1: 'Before Sunrise'

Criterion, the bastion of all that is intellectual/cool/hip/legendary in film history, has just released a beautiful, extras-laden box set of the Before trilogy of movies by Richard Linklater.

A dissection of the love affair of a couple over three decades (with films released in 1995, 2004, and 2013), this small cult film has grown into a wonderfully intimate dissection of finding, losing, regaining, and questioning a romantic relationship over a large portion of a lifetime.

The first film in the series, Before Sunrise, was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it, small indie, released in January of 1995. I caught the film that winter, in a suburban Minneapolis movie theater, alone in both the theater and in my romantic life; it was quite a revelation. Being just about the same age as the two main characters in the film, and having recently spent some time in Europe in college, I felt an "experience kinship" of sorts. Let's say I was all-in for the ride.

Speaking of, our two protagonists, Jesse (Ethan Hawke) - an American visiting the Continent with a '90s Eurail pass, and Celine (Julie Delpy) - a French college student returning to Paris, meet each other by chance on a train heading toward Vienna. After a few hours of conversation on the train, they hit Vienna - Jesse's destination - and he convinces her to get off there with him and continue talking. She does, and we embark on a, now, hour-and-a-half-long film of a nearly 24-hour-long first date.

If you're not into the talkfest vibe of films like My Dinner with Andre or the underrated, largely forgotten Mindwalk (an early '90s, sort of grown-up Before Sunrise, minus the romantic element), then you might have passed on Sunrise, maybe due to the lazy press angle that it was a twentysomething grunge rom-com set in Europe. But it's so much smarter than that.

The romantic, languorous vibe of these Clinton-era youths flows through their pre-internet, pre-smartphone world. There's no Top 10 Best Sights in Vienna Buzzfeed list they're following, or texts to check, Facebook or Instagram posts to make. 1995 in the film could be 1985, or 1975 in a way; it's about talking, sharing, and bonding, but not with technology.

The two share thoughts, ideas, theories, and memories on culture, dating, religion, human interaction, etc. in a variety of locations around Vienna (restaurants, bars, parks, shops, carnival, river walk, etc.). I compared the slow awakening of their interest in each other with my awakening to similar decisions and thoughts in my head, all of us eager youths in the mid-'90s.

 

The lovers part the next morning with plans to meet up again six months later at the train station they're departing from, with no exchange of contact information; they're going on blind faith that they'll make this next event happen. The cliffhanger ending, as it were, is: Do they ever meet up again?

For years and years (nine to be exact), you never knew and presumed would never know the answer to a movie that ends with a question mark.

Imagine the reaction of the small cult of fans around the world when they found out Linklater, Delpy, and Hawke were making a sequel to this small romantic tale. The 2004 sequel, Before Sunset (the focus of a blog post in the very near future) answers the questions I had and poses more.

Although the subsequent two films delve deeper into these characters lives, with more lived-in, believable, and deeper performances by Delpy and Hawke (who have grown leaps and bounds in skill with each film), the first film has a naive magic that hovers around this first installment of this couple's tale.

It could be the innocence of the '90s, the rambunctiousness of early twentysomething wanderlust, or the dewy babyfaces of the hero and heroine of this romance, but Sunrise is the honeymoon period, the calm before the storm, the yearning instead of experiencing the coupledom to come. It glows.




















 

From 'Paris' to the World: 'Kiki' and the New Scene

The joy of video on demand is that you can access hard-to-find, barely released, festival-only films immediately from the comfort of your couch. Movies that would have had to trickle down through the endless festival circuit to (maybe) play on a tiny screen in the indie-est of theaters in your town is a thing of the past.

Kiki, a 2016 feature-length doc on the latest version of the New York City ball scene is now on iTunes, the same day it was released in a few theaters in major markets. Now, if you're in tumbleweed Nebraska, you can still watch this document of the lives of 21st century QPOC (queer people of color) concurrently, not years later as a time capsule. Kiki's obvious predecessor/godmother was Paris is Burning, which went from festival to tiny theatrical run to gathering a long, growing cult audience, years and then decades after release. It made the journey from clunky videotapes to DVDs and then streaming.

Both Kiki and Paris follow the ball community in NYC but decades apart. Whereas Paris was almost a worldwide debut of a movement for anyone outside of this small but tight NYC QPOC community, Kiki is a continuation of a scene that has reached, if not mainstream, than a much larger audience.

The ballroom scene, now dubbed "Kiki" by the new generation, still has houses like decades before but the immediate world around them has more of a present, but still fragile, support system, unlike the outsider and secluded world of Paris's 1980s isolation.

Although Kiki has a little less emphasis on the flashy ball performances and scathing judging of Paris and more on the contestants' daytime lives as social workers and activists, maybe that's not such a bad thing. Well-rounded human portraits of the lives of these young adults may be what takes Kiki from the "look at me"/"look at this world" voyeurism of Paris to the "how can we change our circumstance?" and "how can we get drag/vogue/kiki established as a long-term cultural expression from POC?" much like jazz and hip-hop have done for decades.

The sophistication and order of the costumes, dancing, and expression is elevated from the rough-around-the-edges world of the mid '80s. Empowerment, education, and activism have come closer to the center of the lives of the Kiki kids.

While that may dampen the excitement audiences found in the raw thrill of the Paris ball scenes, in Kiki it shows the challenges QPOC young adults and teens face, up front and center. These challenges make the kids of Kiki feel truly real.

Get In to It: 'Get Out' and New Heroes

Note: I purposely did not include a trailer (as I usually do) at the top of this post because it revealed too much about the movie; it was a spoiler minefield. Better to go into this movie not knowing what's going to happen.

Do you ever stop and think of the cast of a horror movie and the order the victims are picked off, one by one? Types, archetypes, stereotypes. Usually there are "token" characters: "the loudmouth goofball," "the slut," "the bookworm nerd," and "the black guy."

These "types" are picked off early to narrow down to the final duo (usually one girl and one guy, usually white) who survive. Jordan Peele (one half of sketch comedy duo Key & Peele) has made a new horror/dark comedy film Get Out that upends those conventions. The "black guy" is the protagonist/hero of this smart satirical take on race and modern horror, in movies and society at large.

Chris (Daniel Kaluuya, so great in Black Mirror) is a black photographer with an affluent white girlfriend, Rose (Allison Williams) who take a weekend trip to Rose's parent's rural mansion to meet for the first time. Clunky, awkward praise of "black people" by the wealthy parents of Rose (played to great, nasty effect by Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener) slowly and smartly veers into creepy, awkward situations that quickly descend into unhinged madness.

"There are plots against people, aren't there?" - Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow), Rosemary's Baby

"If I'm wrong, I'm insane...but if I'm right, it's even worse than if I was wrong." - Joanna Eberhart (Katherine Ross), The Stepford Wives

Writer/director Peele has acknowledged the influence of two Ira Levin book-to-screen adaptations, Rosemary's Baby and The Stepford Wives, to the satirical base and vibe of Get Out. While Rosemary dealt with religion/faith and Stepford with feminism, this film takes on race, in that same fish out of water/"Am I the only one who's not crazy here?" paranoia permeating the whole atmosphere. A lush, manicured, spotless mansion and grounds do not lull Chris into submission, especially when he meets the seemingly catatonic groundskeeper and maid, Walter and Georgina, also black.

Chris's best friend Rod (LilRel Howery), house and dog sitting his place in the city, adds much needed levity and comic relief as a lifeline/reality check, as Chris questions his own sanity during the weekend vacation.

The first half of the film is a solid, slow-burn psychological thriller while the second half dives into a gorier, more traditional horror film, but with a solid streak of satirical smarts. This balancing act could have gone off the rails and produced a lopsided mess of an ending, but Get Out keeps on that tightrope walk all the way to the final shot.

Horror, as a genre, reboots and re-imagines itself more than most film genres do, when it comes to basic conventions. Get Out and its creator Peele are happy to do that.

The survivor is a black man; welcome to a winning new take on an old genre.