1986.05xx – Los Angeles, CA
Foreign Film February: The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967)
Jaques Demy was one of the great French directors. He was an instrumental part of the French New Wave. Early in his career, he wrote and directed two back-to-back musicals, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), and The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967). They are considered essential classics. Some many months ago my wife wanted to watch The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and so we did.
I didn’t love it.
I like musicals, more or less, but they aren’t my favorite. That’s not a genre I turn to all that often. I once tried to make musicals my theme of the month and I only watched about three of them.
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is a type of musical that has very little dialogue. Almost everything is sung. I’m not a lyrics guy so musicals are always a little problematic in that I tend to miss plot points when they are sung. When everything is sung I get lost pretty quickly. That’s apparently even true when they sing in French and there are subtitles.
But also there weren’t any showstoppers. The music was nice but there wasn’t a single song that left me humming after it was over. There was no “Oh What a Beautiful Mornin'” or “Sit Down You’re Rocking the Boat” or whatever.
It was a perfectly fine film, but I’m not sure what all the fuss is about.
When my wife wanted to watch The Young Girls of Rochefort I was none too excited, but I relented because I love her and I enjoy watching films with her.
I liked this one a lot better. There is quite a bit of actual dialogue which allowed me to follow the story more closely. The story itself is more interesting to me. It is light and frothy and a delight. It follows two sisters (real-life siblings Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac) as they look for love in the titular coastal town of France. Little do they know their true love is closer than they think.
Much like Umbrellas, The Young Girls of Rochefort is full of bright, pastel colors, and the costumes are very 1960s and very beautiful. It feels like this one is full of real songs too. Songs you’ll leave the theater singing. It also has Gene Kelly who is always a delight.
Loads of people love The Umbrellas of Cherbourg so I probably need to revisit it at some point. I suspect knowing what I’m getting into will help me enjoy its charms more. But for now I tip my hat to The Young Girls of Rochefort and delight in it fully.
The Friday Night Horror Movie: House (1977)
Steven Spielberg’s Jaws was a massive worldwide hit in 1975. Naturally, studios from all over tried to find ways to replicate that success. The Japanese studio Toho was no exception and they hired Nobuhiko Obayashi to write something Jaws-like. What he came up with was one of the strangest, incomprehensible films I’ve ever seen.
The basic plot, if you want to call it that, is actually pretty simple. A teenaged girl nick-named Gorgeous (Kimiko Ikegami) (most of the characters in this film have goofy names like Kung Fu, Fantasy, and Sweet) invites several of her friends to spend summer vacation at her Aunt’s (Yōko Minamida) house. Strange things begin happening almost immediately once they arrive. It seems the house is haunted.
But any type of plot outline will do nothing to explain just how completely nuts this film is. Criterion describes it by saying that it’s like if an episode of Scooby Doo were directed by Mario Bava. I’d add that it’s a psychedelic cartoon turned into a live-action nightmare.
There is a floating head that bites one girl in the butt checks, a piano that eats people, an evil cat, a murderous futon, and so much more. The sets’ backdrops are gorgeous and intentionally designed to call attention to their fakeness. Obayashi uses fisheye lenses, superimposed images, freeze-frames, matte paintings, periodical animation, and every other cinematic trick at his disposal.
It feels both thrown together and tightly scripted. It is more comedic than horrifying, and more bizarre than thematically satisfying, but it truly is a film worth watching.
It is one of those films I’ve been hearing about for ages. The Criterion Collection got ahold of it a few years back and it’s been talked about ever since. But for one reason or another, I kept putting off watching it. I like weird films but I feel like I need to be in the mood for them, and I rarely feel like I’m really in the mood. But I needed a foreign language horror film and was struggling to find something so I put it on.
I’m so glad I did.
Foreign Film February: Smiles of a Summer Night (1955)
Several years ago, probably during one of their semi-annual 50% off sales, I bought the Criterion Collection’s big boxed set of Ingmar Bergman’s movies. Ingmar Bergman is a titan of cinema. He’s widely considered one of the world’s greatest film directors, having helmed many of the greatest movies ever made.
His films are intellectual, somber, sometimes experimental, and almost always challenging. He made movies about life and death, spirituality, and religion (he made an entire trilogy from the Silence of God). As such his films are often difficult to watch. I love many of his films and yet this boxed set has set on my shelf mostly gathering dust. Bergman films are a bit like “Dark Stars” from 1969 – infinitely rewarding, but you’ve got to be in the right head space and you’ve definitely got to pay attention to what they are trying to do.
Since it is Foreign Film February I knew I wanted to watch a Bergman (I think I said the same thing last year and didn’t manage to do it). The Criterion set doesn’t present the films chronologically, but rather as one might if you were creating a film festival for the director’s works. Previously, I randomly picked films out of the collection to watch but this time I decided to begin at the beginning, the Collection’s “Opening Night” selection, Smiles of a Summer Night (1955).
Smiles was made at a difficult time in Bergman’s life. His previous two films had not done well and the studio essentially told him if his next film wasn’t a success he was done. His personal life was in turmoil and, according to the liner notes included in the Criterion set, he decided he was either going to make a new film or commit suicide.
So, Ingmar Bergman, a director famed for his sober, austere films about the meaning of life, during one of the lowest points in his life made a light comedy.
And honest-to-God it is funny.
When I read Bergman had made a comedy I figured it would be more like Shakespearian comedies, meaning that it wasn’t a tragedy – that it didn’t end in the death of everybody. But no, it is a laugh-out-loud, full of clever wordplay and incident comedy.
It is a comedy of manners. It reminded me of the works of Moliere or Oscar Wilde or some other writer I studied in school and have long since forgotten.
The dialogue is clever and droll, and Bergman uses such a light touch that one sometimes has to stop and wonder where all this fancifulness came from.
Fredrik Egerman (Gunnar Björnstrand) is a successful, respected, middle-aged lawyer. He’s married to the much younger Anne (Ulla Jacobsson). It is his second marriage, his first wife died some years ago. Before he met Anne he was involved in a torrid romance with Desiree (Eva Dahlbeck), a famous actress.
When he learns that Desiree is in town starring in a show, he gets two tickets and decides to take his wife. But before they go they take a nap together (as one does). While sleeping he reaches over and caresses Anne. She’s pretty excited by this because even though they’ve been married for a couple of years they’ve never had sex. He doesn’t want to spoil her or some such nonsense. So he’s caressing her and getting all sexy and stuff and then he says her name, and how much he loves her. Except the name he says isn’t Anne, it’s Desiree.
Oops.
They go to the theater, but Anne is understandably upset. When she realizes that the star is named Desiree and that her husband keeps looking at her through the opera glasses, she feigns illness and goes home. Once he’s settled her into bed he slips back out and goes to the theater.
They go back to their place where they barb, jab, and argue over why they broke up in the first place. Frederik solicits help from Desiree for his marital strife, but it is clear they both still have some feelings for each other.
Then Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm (Jarl Kulle) shows up. He’s Desiree’s current lover and he’s insanely jealous. He’s also married. To a girl named Charlotte Malcolm (Margit Carlqvist). At one point without a bit of irony, he utters the line “I can tolerate my wife’s infidelity, but if anyone touches my mistress, I become a tiger.”
Naturally, the five of them wind up together at a dinner party before the film ends. Plenty of mix-ups, double entendres, and verbal jousts ensue. It really is astounding just how light and effervescent this film is. It is hard to believe that the same man who directed this film would go on to direct The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries just two years later.
That isn’t to say everything is carefree and happy in this film, it is still a Bergman after all. There is a duel in which two characters play Russian Roulette. And one of the film’s best gags comes at the end of a suicide attempt.
One can’t help but wonder what cinema would be like had Bergman gone on to make delightful romantic comedies. Who knows what else we might have gotten. Instead, we got a plethora of serious dramatic masterpieces. I’ll certainly take that any day of the week.
Foreign Film February: Encounter of the Spooky Kind (1980)
I recently resubscribed to The Criterion Channel. It is without a doubt my favorite streaming service, but I have a tendency to put it on hold for a month or two. There are just so many other services and various other ways in which to watch shows and movies that I just can’t afford to subscribe to everything all the time.
One of the many things I love about The Criterion Channel is that it not only has some of the world’s greatest cinema on there – from Kurosawa to Bergman, Fellini to Welles, but it also has tons of oddball, weirdo films as well. The people behind it are just as comfortable with the arthouse as with the grindhouse.
Case in point I watched this film this weekend on the channel. Encounter of the Spooky Kind is a silly martial arts movie that blends low-brow comedy with horror with lots of crazy kung fu thrown in for good measure.
It was co-written, directed by and stars Sammo Hung as Bold Cheung a rikshaw driver. One day while working he discovers two men looking through the peephole of his house, excited that a couple is making love inside. Bold Cheung barges in, narrowly missing the man with whom his wife is having an affair.
That man is actually Master Tam (Huang Ha) Bold Cheung’s boss. Afraid that he will be found out and that Bold Cheung will have his revenge on him, Master Tam vows to murder Bold Cheung. But he cannot do it outright as he might get caught and be put in prison.
Luckily Master Tam knows a sorcerer. He tricks Bold Cheung into spending two nights inside a haunted house. There the sorcerer has control over a hopping vampire (seriously, apparently Chinese folklore involves living corpses that move around by hopping and sucking out your life force).
Luckily for Bold Cheung the sorcerer’s apprentice doesn’t think they should use their powers for evil purposes and he sets out to help Bold Cheung to survive.
There’s a bit of voodoo, some more vampires, and even a magic undergarment thrown into the mix. It is all very silly (a little too silly for my tastes) and it runs a bit too long, but mostly it’s a lot of fun. The kung fu is excellent which more than makes it worthwhile to watch.
He Walked By Night (1948)
Every Noirvember I spend some time searching for film noirs that I’ve never seen. Last year I saw several lists including He Walked By Night as one of the great film noirs of all time. I had this vague notion that I’d seen it before but upon checking my Letterboxd feed I saw that I had never logged it. My Letterboxd feed is sacrosanct (except when it isn’t) and so I knew I had never watched it before.
But that nagging feeling that I had seen it kept me from putting it on that Noirvember. I got a chance to review the Blu-ray for Cinema Sentries and I figured it didn’t matter if I’d seen it before or not, it is considered a classic and therefore it would be good to have it in my collection.
I put the movie on thinking I’d definitely not seen it before. There was one scene in which a robber comes through a backdoor and is lit in a really interesting way that seemed familiar but I figured there were lots of scenes like that, probably, and I definitely hadn’t seen this one.
Then there was a scene where the cops are asking witnesses what the criminal looks like and it is such a fascinating scene that I immediately knew I’d seen it before.
Sometimes I forget to log things in my Letterboxd is what I’m saying.
Now that my pointless story is over you can read my actual review here.
Foreign Film February: Re/Member (2022)
By now we all know the Groundhog Day Drill. Someone for some reason gets stuck in a time loop. The same day is played out for them over and over again. To stop it they must do something – make a life change, find a killer, stop a war, etc. whatever. There were time loop films before Groundhog Day, but that film perfected the concept and countless films have tried to repeat its success in various ways.
Re/Memory takes the basic concept and mixes it with a slasher horror film (something that has become something of a sub-sub-genre in itself) and a Japanese high school melodrama. Results are very mixed.
One of the many strange things the film does is that it kind of pushes many of the time loop elements to the side in order to focus on the relationship of its characters.
Set in a typical Japanese high school six students find themselves reliving the same day over and over. Eventually, they realize their task is to find the mutilated body parts of a young girl who was murdered many years ago. The ghost of the girl haunts them every day at midnight, stalking them until they are all dead, and the day resets.
But it only happens after midnight. The day begins in the morning and they each go about their regular day – attending school, having lunch, playing sports, etc. Then at midnight, they are transported to the chapel inside the school where they must find those body parts before getting killed. Apparently, the various arms and legs aren’t available during the day.
It is so strange to see them acting like normal high school kids with all of their romances and social clicks only to find them at night running for their lives. The film never deals with the fact that being murdered every night and watching your friends get killed would be incredibly traumatic for these kids.
These six kids are all lonely in one way or another. Our main protagonist, Asuka (Kanna Hashimoto) is considered a loner. No one at school talks to her and they act like she’s some sort of freak. Some of the others are outcasts as well, but some seem to be popular kids. They have friends, but deep down they are just as lonely.
Through battling a vengeful ghost every night they become a tight group of friends. It is like The Breakfast Club, but with a vengeful, murderous ghost. This is handled fairly poorly. For the first two days, all the other kids still shun Asuka, but suddenly on the third morning, they treat her like a bestie. And she’s suddenly no longer this super shy kid, but outgoing and friendly.
The horror aspects aren’t handled any better. The film tends to skip over the hunting for the body parts scenes. The kids do eventually learn to handle the hunt systematically, but there is very little actual searching for anything. In the same way, it skips over most of the real terror of the situation. There are maybe one or two moments where the kids are hiding from the monster, hoping to escape its clutches, but mostly the film focuses on the capture. There is plenty of violence and (poorly rendered) CGI gore.
I was more interested in the daytime scenes, but I’ve always been a sucker for high school movies. If you are looking for a horror take on the classic Ground Hog Day scenario there are many other better choices. I recommend Happy Death Day.
The Friday Night Horror Movie: Noroi: The Curse (2005)
For a very brief period in the early 2000s, Americans became obsessed with a certain type of Japanese horror (or J-Horror as it was known). We’d spent the 1980s watching slasher films, but by the 1990s those had grown stale. We didn’t seem to know what should take its place. So much so that in 1996 Wes Craven directed Scream which was essentially a self-aware slasher with hot TV stars.
Whereas American horror tended to be filled with horrendous violence and jump scares, Japanese horror at the time was more foreboding. The violence was toned down and in its place was psychological horror and a brooding atmosphere.
The Blair Witch Project introduced Americans to the found-footage genre in 1999. That movie, which is about some independent filmmakers making a documentary about a mythological witch that is supposed to haunt rural Maryland. They go missing and the film is supposedly made up of their leftover footage. It is a mix of their professionally made documentary footage and a lot of handheld camera work created by the actual actors living for a few weeks in the woods. It created a craze of found-footage horror.
Noroi: The Curse is a mixture of J-Horror and found footage films. It begins with a voiceover telling us about the life of Masafumi Kobayashi (Jin Muraki) who was a journalist investigating paranormal activity across Japan. Recently his house burned to the ground, killing his wife, but his body was not recovered and he is presumed missing.
He left behind a series of videotapes full of his research. The film presents those tapes along with a series of newsreels and television footage of various occult specials and the like. It all creates a sort of documentary approach to this fictional story.
At first, his investigative reports seem unrelated. There is a young girl with psychic abilities. An actress (Marika Matsumoto) sees something spooky in a graveyard and collapses. Another woman hears a baby crying next door, but the family’s children are all much older.
Slowly all of these various stories connect and point to a demon that was released from a village that is now buried under water after a dam was built. It seems to have possessed someone and is causing nearly everyone connected to the story to die under mysterious circumstances.
The violence is mostly off-screen and there is essentially zero gore. Tonally it is filled with an eeriness and the creepy soaks right through. I’m not a big fan of hand-held camerawork in movies as it tends to make me dizzy. There is some of that here, but mostly it’s used quite effectively. The camera is framed so that there are often strange little things in the background or on the edges of the screen. It makes you pay attention.
Like a lot of found footage films in which the characters seem to always be carrying a camera, there are times when I wanted to scream at them to put the camera down and run, or fight, or at least help that person getting pummelled by a demon. At least here our hero isn’t the one carrying the camera, he’s actually got a cameraman (working for his documentary) to do that for him.
The film uses the various footage in interesting ways. The way in which it moves between stuff shot by Kobayashi, and various television crews keeps the movie moving in a manner that other found footage films cannot keep up with.
I was a huge fan of J-horror during its initial craze, but I somehow missed this one. I’m glad I found it tonight as it is a good one.
The Movie Journal – January 2024
I watched 46 movies in January. 36 of them were new to me. 24 of them were made before I was born. 12 movies fit my theme of the month, Frozen In January.
As I mentioned in other posts I got Covid early in the month which pretty much killed that theme. From then on I mostly just watched whatever suited me at the moment, which mostly meant a lot of old movies, and quite a bit of comfort viewings.
One of the things I enjoy about starting the new year is that all of my stats reset. I get to start fresh. I get to think about the types of genres I want to watch, about the directors and stars I want to seek out. Later in the year, those things will start to solidify, but in January it’s all new. This month my top three genres were drama (25 films), thriller (20 films), and of course horror (14 films).
Clark Gable is my top star with an astonishing six films of his watched this month. That was almost by accident. I watched a couple of his films randomly early on and then caught a third. I liked that one quite a bit (A Man of Her Own) and then realized it was my third Gable film of the month and that I was really starting to like him as an actor (I’ve only seen 13 of his films in total so this month doubled my viewings) and decided to catch a few more.
Surprisingly the only director I watched more than one movie from was Umberto Lenzi, an Italian specializing in genre films – he helped Gang War in Milan and Nightmare City.
Overall it was a pretty good month. February is Foreign Film Month so look forward to me talking about subtitles.
He Walked by Night (1948) – ***1/2
Red Sparrow (2018) – ***1/2
Gang War in Milan (1973) – ***
China Seas (1935) – ***1/2
Mogambo (1953) – ***
Red Dust (1932) – ****
The Furies (1950) – ****1/2
Them! (1954) – ****
The Kiss of the Vampire (1963) – ****
Nightmare City (1980) – ***1/2
Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart to Hades (1972) – ***
No Man of Her Own (1932) – ***1/2
Man in the Shadow (1957) – ***1/2
Iron Man (1951) – ***
The Favourite (2018) – ****
Chicago Deadline (1949) – ***1/2
The Mystery of Marie Roget (1942) – ***
Intimidation (1960) – ****
Till Death (2021) – **
Run Silent, Run Deep (1958) – ****
I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes (1948) – ***
Sleepwalkers (1992) – ***
Airport ’77 (1977) – ***
Somebody I Used to Know (2023) – *1/2
The Swimmer (1968) – ****
The Living Dead Girl (1982) – ***1/2
The Shining (1980) – ****1/2
Wind Chill (2007) – **
Night Nurse (1931) – ***1/2
Rancho Notorious (1952) – ***1/2
The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961) – ****1/2
The Cat Creeps (1946) – ***
Devil in a Blue Dress (1995) – ****
The Lady Vanishes (2013) – ***1/2
The Martian (2015) – ****1/2
The Lodge (2019) – ***
The Thing (1982) – *****
Insomnia (2002) – ****
The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2015) – ***1/2
Phantoms (1998) – **
The Revenant (2015) – ****
A Bullet for Sandoval (1969) – ***
Death Hunt (1981) – *
Whiteout (2009) – *1/2
Jeremiah Johnson (1972) – ****
Miller’s Crossing (1990) – *****
Frozen In January – All the Movies
For years and years now I’ve watched horror movies all through October. That’s not an original idea, thousands of people do the same thing as it’s fun to watch scary movies just before Halloween. Then a few years ago I discovered Noirvember and I’ve had a lot of fun with that. So much so that I continue to play with the idea of creating themes every month.
Sometimes they work really well. Last year’s Westerns in March and Awesome ’80s In April allowed me to watch and discover a bunch of interesting movies and I was able to write a few things about them. But I tried to do musicals one month and completely bombed at it, and last year I thought it would be fun to watch one movie I’d never seen from every year I’ve been alive. That was fun but it drifted off after about a decade’s worth of movies.
What I’ve realized is that when I pick a theme that is fairly broad in scope and full of the types of movies I already enjoy then I do fairly well with it, but when I get more specific my watching and writing tend to peter out pretty quick.
So when I pick a genre I like (westerns, horror films) I have no problem watching lots of those films within a given month because it’s the sort of thing I already watch a lot of. Or if I pick something really broad (like the entirety of the 1980s) then there is plenty of variety to choose from and I don’t get bored.
But when I get too specific (like musicals – a genre I enjoy but in small doses, or last month’s choice – films with isolated and cold settings) then my interest tends to wane before the month is over.
So it was with Frozen in January. I started out strong. I watched quite a few movies that fit the bill. I wrote about a couple but then Covid hit. My wife got it first. She was down and out for a week and I felt fine. Quarantine allowed me to watch quite a few of those films and I had all sorts of thoughts about what to write. Then I got it and it knocked me flat out. I spent a couple of days feeling really sick and another week feeling completely drained of all my energy. I watched comfort TV and forgot about writing anything.
It has been difficult getting back into the groove. Once I started feeling better my desire to watch frozen movies dissolved. My ability to write much of anything was gone.
However, I did want to say a few words about the movies I watched. I won’t write full reviews, but I did want to at least mention those movies as at least a nod towards this month’s theme.
Jeremiah Johnson (1972): Robert Redford plays a real-life mountain man who learns to survive all alone in an unforgiving environment. I wrote a full review here.
Whiteout (2009): Kate Beckinsale plays a US Marshall in Antarctica. Bad things happen. I knew this wasn’t going to be good, but the setup was interesting so I took the plunge. You can read my full thoughts here.
Death Hunt (1981): Charles Bronson plays a guy who moves to the Yukon for a little peace and quiet. He saves a dog and gets hunted for it. It is a dumb, dumb movie, the kind they could only make in the 1980s. You can read my full review here.
The Revenant (2015): Leonardo DiCaprio plays a frontiersman in the 1820s. He gets left for dead after being mauled by a bear and spends the rest of the movie getting pummelled by the elements, the natives, and everything else. But in the end, he finds his revenge. DiCaprio won the Oscar for it and Alejandro González Iñárritu fills it with some stunning direction.
Phantoms (1988): Based on a Dean Koontz book this film focuses on a group of strangers battling evil creatures in a snow-covered small town in Colorado. Despite a good cast (Ben Affleck, Peter O’Toole, Rose McGowan, Liev Schreiber) the film can’t overcome its silly, ridiculous origins.
The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2015): Emma Roberts and Kiernan Shipka play two very different private school girls who spend an isolated, cold Christmas break on campus. A mysterious evil stalks them. This is of the modern school of “elevated horror” where the shots are meticulously crafted, the score is an eerie drone, but very little actually happens.
Insomnia (2002): Christopher Nolan’s remake of a Norwegian thriller stars Al Pacino as a cop with a dark past seeking a killer in the far north where the sun never stops shining. Robin Williams proves he was more than just a funny guy as the killer.
The Thing (1982): John Carpenter’s masterpiece is the perfect entry into my theme. I wrote a whole Friday Night Horror piece on it here.
‘Til Death (2021): Megan Fox stars as a woman who has a romantic evening with her husband at an isolated cabin in the snow-covered woods. She wakes up to find him dead and herself handcuffed to his corpse. That’s a fun premise but the movie makes stupid decision after stupid decision and completely ruins it. I wrote a rambly review over on Letterboxd.
The Lodge (2019): Man takes his two kids and fiancee (Riley Keough) into the woods to his isolated lodge. Then he goes back to the city to work (on Christmas for some reason). Strange things start happening driving her to the brink. The first act is chilly creepy and moody, then it all falls apart.
The Martian (2015): Oh, I had such a thing for this written up in my mind about how this movie fits with my theme. Then I got busy, or distracted, or something, and never put pen to paper. Matt Damon is an astronaut who gets accidentally stranded on Mars (an isolated setting, horrific terrain that can kill him in an instant – see it sort of fits my theme.) I love it. It has become one of my go-to movies when I’m feeling crappy.
The Shining (1980): Stanley Kubrick’s only foray into horror remains one of the all-time greats. I wrote a whole Friday Night Horror piece about it here.
Wind Chill (2007): Emily Blunt and Ashton Homes are two college students sharing a ride home for the holidays. They get stuck in the snow on some isolated back road and are haunted by ghosts. There are some cool ideas here, but ultimately it didn’t work for me.
That’s it. If you made it this far, thanks for reading.
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