Esoterica Archives - Page 7 of 18

Fantastic Fest ’15: Short Films

October 16, 2015****/****, 2015, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Disability, Drama, Esoterica, Fantastic Fest, Fantastic Fest '15, Film Festivals, Horror, Japan, Romance, Satire, Sci-Fi, Short Films, Sweden, ZERO STARS

by Walter Chaw

The Babysitter Murders ****/**** (d. Ryan Spindell) For certain artists working in the short-film format, I don't have any idea how or why it is they haven't been called up to the big leagues yet. This speaks as much to my prejudice, obviously: there's nothing wrong with the short form. In literature, many of my favourite writers are best in the short form. In film, though, there's so little real opportunity for distribution that it seems a particular shame when guys like Ryan Spindell have only produced shorts. I'm not complaining (his work is excellent), merely hoping he has the means to continue. Spindell's latest, The Babysitter Murders, is so expertly composited that it would be kind of a shame to dissect it at all. Sufficed to say that it unearths a new place to take Wes Craven's Scream meta funhouse, and does it without a hint of smugness or show-off-y insecurity. It's beautifully paced, conceived, and executed. Look at a cooking scene early on, set to "Fast & Sweet" by Mondo Boys feat. Kestrin Pantera–the way it's shot and edited, the way Elie Smolkin's camera stalks and Eric Ekman cuts it all together. The movie's premise–a babysitter alone on a stormy night when a psycho escapes from an asylum–is as rote as they come, but Spindell, as he did with The Root of the Problem and dentists, finds something new to say. The performances are to a one pitch-perfect and the gore is appropriately horrifying; it's a film balanced in that space between hilarity for its excess and hilarity for its brilliance. I'm out of superlatives. Spindell is one of the finest voices working in genre right now, carving out a niche that's neither self-serious nor self-abnegating. He's full of joy, this one, and his movies are treasures.

Fantastic Fest ’15: In Search of the Ultra-Sex

October 3, 20152015, Authors: Walter Chaw, Esoterica, Fantastic Fest, Fantastic Fest '15, Film Festivals, France, Satire, Sci-Fi

A la recherche de l'Ultra-Sex½*/****directed by Nicolas Charlet & Bruno Lavaine by Walter Chaw I saw a hacked anime once--pre-Adult Swim and projects of that ilk--that took place on a flying aircraft carrier and had been re-dubbed so that all the characters were offering different euphemisms for flatulence. My favourite was, "I can't seem to take a step without introducing Mr. Wetty." It lasted about four minutes and I enjoyed a good three-and-a-half of it. Nicholas Charlet and Bruno Lavaine's In Search of the Ultra-Sex is a full hour of R-rated excerpts from classic porn, dubbed to be a Plan 9…

Telluride ’15: Anomalisa

September 11, 2015****/****, 2015, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Charlie Kaufman, Comedy, Esoterica, Film Festivals, Telluride, Telluride 2015

****/****
screenplay by Charlie Kaufman
directed by Duke Johnson & Charlie Kaufman

by Walter Chaw Writing about a Charlie Kaufman film, if you do it honestly, is writing about yourself. I’ve said before, and it helps me to repeat it, that I don’t really understand Kaufman’s films, but that they do understand me. Kaufman is the most important, innovative voice in American cinema since Orson Welles, and though he has enjoyed more autonomy in expressing that voice than Welles, I would argue that the seven years separating his directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York, and this follow-up, a stop-motion collaboration with Duke Johnson called Anomalisa, suggest that it’s not as easy as it should be. Certainly the journey that Anomalisa has taken is far from conventional, from Kaufman play written under the pseudonym “Francis Fregosi,” through a Kickstarter campaign, through the general challenge of making an adult-themed animation in a country that sees animation as a genre not a medium, to now this tour of festivals, looking for distribution. The play was introduced as part of a Carter Burwell project titled “Theater of the New Ear”. It was a late replacement on a Kaufman/Coen Bros. double-bill when the Coens “dropped out” at the eleventh hour, and this unknown Fregosi’s piece took its place.

The Fisher King (1991) [The Criterion Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

August 4, 2015****/****, 1990s, 2015, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Directors: Terry Gilliam, Drama, Esoterica, FFC Must-Own, Romance, The Criterion Collection

****/**** Image A- Sound A Extras A-
starring Jeff Bridges, Robin Williams, Amanda Plummer, Mercedes Ruehl
written by Richard LaGravenese
directed by Terry Gilliam

by Bryant Frazer New York City is cast against type in The Fisher King, where it plays an urban fantasy realm complete with castles, towers, villages, and wilderness. Kings and queens look down from their lofty aeries on the dirty streets below, where peasants defend their hard-won territory against barbarian hordes. Imposing forests of skyscrapers jut up from the concrete, cave dwellings yawn open at the base of the Manhattan Bridge, and the city’s homeless specialize in ad hoc musical theatre. The Holy Grail may be hidden in a fortress on the Upper East Side. And there are no dragons in New York, but the Red Knight is a motherfucker.

The Merchant of Four Seasons (1971) [The Criterion Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

August 3, 20151970s, 2015, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Esoterica, The Criterion Collection, West Germany

Merchantfourseasons1

Händler der vier Jahreszeiten
***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Irm Hermann, Hanna Schygulla, Hans Hirschmüller, Marian Seidowsky
written and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder

by Jefferson Robbins When beleaguered costermonger Hans Epp (Hans Hirschmüller) shouts his wares in the courtyard well of a grey Munich apartment block, he might as well be shouting into the void. Although his singsong calling of the prices of fruits is mesmeric, it summons practically no customers. Blocky and straining against his own skin, Hans has been humiliated all his life, and the manner in which he makes his livelihood is a further humiliation in the eyes of his family. The word used for “livelihood” in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Merchant of Four Seasons is the German noun Existenz. Clearly, it has multiple edges.

Herzog: The Collection [Blu-ray Disc] – Stroszek

May 13, 2015****/****, 1970s, 2015, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Directors: Werner Herzog, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Germany, Scream/Shout! Factory, West Germany

Stroszek

****/****
DVD – Image A Sound A Commentary A
BD – Image B Sound A- Commentary A
starring Bruno S., Eva Mattes, Clemens Scheitz, Wilhelm von Homburg
written and directed by Werner Herzog

by Walter Chaw I love this film. I’m enthralled by it. And every time I revisit it, it has a new gift for me. Bruno S. plays the titular Stroszek, a street performer released from a two-year institutionalization and left to his own devices with hooker girlfriend Eva (Eva Mattes) and pal Mr. Scheitz (Clemens Scheitz). There’s a transparency to the performances that transcends naturalism: you sense that the actors are not only playing themselves (more so than usual), but also that they’re playing themselves as allegorical figures in a metaphor for their lives. It’s Spider, but it’s at once more and less expressionistic than David Cronenberg’s film–and while the long, quiet, empty reaches of living in the giant abandoned warehouse of a mind in flux is a constant melancholy the two films share, there is something in Stroszek, crystallized in the haunting image of a premature baby pawing at its bedding, that does more to traumatize the human condition. When the film’s heroic triumvirate flees Germany for the gilded shores of Wisconsin (“Everybody’s rich there”), in a migration that reminds a little of Aguirre’s doomed hunt for El Dorado, Stroszek is suddenly a picture about pilgrimage to a holy land that exists solely in the windy spaces conjured by the promise of westward expansion.

Inherent Vice (2014)

December 14, 2014****/****, 2014, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Directors: Paul Thomas Anderson, Drama, Esoterica, Mystery, Romance, Theatrical

****/****
starring Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson, Katherine Waterston
screenplay by Paul Thomas Anderson, based on the novel by Thomas Pynchon
directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

by Walter Chaw Paul Thomas Anderson’s maybe-second, arguably third Thomas Pynchon adaptation after There Will Be Blood and The Master, Inherent Vice is the first official one, as well as the truest. It provides a Rosetta stone for Anderson’s career to this point, Pynchon’s work serving as a template for an artist crossing genres while holding true to a certain standard of intellectual rigour, a certain florid prosody, a specific interest in telling true the story of whatever the times may be. Inherent Vice also offers a framework for Anderson’s intimidating film craft, his particular way of marrying image with sound, and the extraordinary shots–unbroken literally or rhythmically–that have made his movies as much pop poetry and music as narrative. Consider the reunion sequence in Punch-Drunk Love that finds Shelley Duvall singing Harry Nilsson on the soundtrack while Anderson rocks the camera like a baby in a cradle, or the wordless opening sequence of There Will Be Blood, with Jonny Greenwood’s terrifying, Kubrick-ian Dawn of Man overture rattling the soundscape. Or the Gravity’s Rainbow opening of The Master as our hero, on a boat, sways in another swaddle far above his madding crowd. Remarkable stuff. Cinema as high art, doing things that only cinema can do.

F for Fake (1973) [The Criterion Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

December 9, 20141970s, 2014, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Orson Welles, Documentary, Esoterica, The Criterion Collection

Fforfake1

***½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
starring Orson Welles, Oja Kodar, Elmyr de Hory, Clifford Irving
written and directed by Orson Welles

by Bryant Frazer In 1971, Pauline Kael did her best to kill Orson Welles. In “Raising Kane,” an essay originally published in THE NEW YORKER and later used as a lengthy introduction to the published screenplay, she argued that Welles had unfairly taken authorial credit for a film whose real creative force was Welles’s credited co-screenwriter, Herman J. Mankiewicz. Kael’s piece was persuasive but hardly comprehensive, cherry-picking evidence in an effort to make a liar of Welles. (In his definitive 1978 book The Making of Citizen Kane, Robert Carringer described Kael’s charge that Welles did not contribute to the script as “a flagrant misrepresentation,” although he did allow that Welles may have hoped not to credit Mankiewicz.) Making the case against Kane was an opportunity for Kael to escalate her ongoing crusade against the auteur theory; it doesn’t seem that she held any personal grudge against Welles, especially given her loving notice for his Chimes at Midnight, made just a few years earlier. But for the aging Welles, by that time a subject of mockery in Hollywood who struggled to finance even the most bargain-basement film projects, the apparently unprovoked attack must have stung. F for Fake is his elegant response: a good-natured but deeply-felt riposte, executed with his considerable showmanship and meant to humble artist and critic alike.

Phantom of the Paradise (1974) [Collector’s Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

October 5, 20141970s, 2014, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Directors: Brian De Palma, Drama, Esoterica, Musical, Scream/Shout! Factory, Thriller

***/**** Image A- Sound A Extras A-
starring Paul Williams, William Finley, Jessica Harper, Gerrit Graham
written and directed by Brian De Palma

by Bryant Frazer When did Brian De Palma become Brian De Palma? Some of the director’s pet themes were already taking shape in his earliest films, and–following his abortive, disowned studio debut, Get to Know Your Rabbit—Sisters proved he could make something out of a lurid, over-the-top indie thriller. But only Phantom of the Paradise suggested the real scale of his outré ambition. Mixing slasher-movie tropes into a supernatural romantic fantasy with elements of rock opera, in collaboration with an actual star singer-songwriter? In 1974, apparently Brian De Palma believed he could do anything.

Fantastic Fest ’14: Darkness by Day

September 22, 2014****/****, 2014, Authors: Walter Chaw, Esoterica, Fantastic Fest, Film Festivals, Horror

El día trajo la oscuridad
****/****
starring Pablo Caramelo, Marta Lubos, Romina Paula, Mora Recalde
screenplay by Josefina Trotta
directed by Martin De Salvo

by Walter Chaw A girl closes a gate, one of those rural gates that spans an entire driveway entrance, and director Martin de Salvo shoots it with a camera mounted on the end of the gate itself. It’s innovative and intimate, and there’s something adoring in it, so we adore her. She’s Virginia (Mora Recalde), a caretaker of her father, a doctor, at a house in the middle of nowhere. One night, he carries in her cousin, Anabel (Romina Paula), mumbles that she’s ill, and takes her up to a bedroom, closing the door. Darkness by Day, de Salvo’s second feature, is beautiful, unfolding in long, contemplative wide shots that, in their composition and subject, remind a great deal of Victor Erice’s The Spirit of the Beehive. It resembles that film, too, in the way it moves like a nightmare–the kind where nothing’s wrong, except everything feels bad. Virginia begins to sleep a lot. Her cousin wakes up, and they spend time together talking, listening to old records, drinking wine. There’s a story between them told only through glances that linger maybe a beat too long and a dance that seems fuelled less by wine than by nostalgia. And nobody seems to be answering the telephone at Anabel’s family home anymore.

TIFF ’14: Maps to the Stars

September 6, 20142014, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Directors: David Cronenberg, Drama, Esoterica, Film Festivals, TIFF

*½/****
directed by David Cronenberg

by Bill Chambers There’s something vaguely pathetic about Bruce Wagner continuing to write these Los Angeles tapestries that send up the movie business, since his Hollywood career peaked in the early-’90s (and the vision of these satires is ossified thereabouts). And getting David Cronenberg–someone so insularly Canadian, and probably the last filmmaker to pore over the trades–to direct one of them is lunacy, albeit potentially inspired in the way that getting a German to helm Paris, Texas was. Indeed, though, Maps to the Stars is the blind leading the blind, taking place in an obsolete world where Carrie Fisher, playing herself, is some kind of industry gatekeeper and a remake of an old black-and-white melodrama is the hottest project in town. Fresh off the bus from Florida, the mysterious, lightly-disfigured Agatha (Mia Wasikowska) arrives in L.A. with an ally in Fisher, who helps get her a job as the personal assistant to high-maintenance Havana Segrand (Julianne Moore), an actress haunted by both her own former glory and the superstardom of her late mother (Cronenberg’s paper-doll muse Sarah Gadon). Havana has regular, sexually-charged sessions with self-help guru Dr. Stafford Weiss (John Cusack), father of teen sensation Benjie Weiss (Evan Bird), a nightmare of Bieberian entitlement who, like Havana, has lately been receiving unwelcome visitations from the dead.

TIFF ’14: Ned Rifle

September 3, 20142014, Authors: Bill Chambers, Drama, Esoterica, Film Festivals, Road Movie, TIFF

***/****
written and directed by Hal Hartley

by Bill Chambers The third, shortest, and presumably final entry in an improbable film series of seesawing returns, Hal Hartley’s Ned Rifle is the religious component of a triptych that has thus far loosely tackled Art (Henry Fool) and Politics (Fay Grim). Titular Ned (Liam Aiken) is the offspring of drifter Casanova Henry Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan) and hapless Fay Grim (Parker Posey), the latter of whom begins this movie in prison as a result of Henry’s antics, consigning Ned to the care of a reverend (Martin Donovan) and his family. Wanting to biblically avenge his mother, Ned follows a trail of breadcrumbs back to his deadbeat dad; yes, the film has the same basic quest premise as Fay Grim, though it takes the form of an askew It Happened One Night this time instead of another globetrotting “Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?” journey. Ned’s interloping travelling companion is Susan (Aubrey Plaza–not a fan, but she curtails her most irritating mannerisms here, and looks dynamite), a grad student with a hidden agenda that somehow entails writing her thesis on the poetry of Simon Grim (James Urbaniak) and ghost-authoring Fay’s memoirs. (“Susan’s brilliant, and she’s a good person, but she’s totally fucked-up,” Simon warns Ned. He could be describing any Hal Hartley protagonist.) A God-fearing Born-again, Ned fends off what he perceives as her advances, but he bristles with jealousy once they track down Henry at a mental hospital and she becomes drawn into his father’s orbit, like so many before her.

Telluride ’14: Birdman

August 29, 20142014, Authors: Walter Chaw, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Comedy, Drama, Esoterica, Film Festivals, Telluride, Telluride 2014

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
*/****
starring Michael Keaton, Zach Galifianakis, Edward Norton, Andrea Riseborough
screenplay Alejandro González Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Jr. & Armando Bo
directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu

by Walter Chaw A benighted, gangly thing midway between a mid-life crisis Black Swan and the Noises Off version of Brazil, Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman is the lonesome yawp of a limited, one-trick-pony given now to defensiveness and self-consciousness. Assailing the tale of a washed-up former mega-star of superhero blockbusters, Riggan Thompson (Michael Keaton, check), who's trying to gain a measure of self-respect on Broadway in a Raymond Carver adaptation he wrote, directed, and is starring in, the picture doesn't do anything it doesn't warn us about first and then apologize for after. It covers the three preview performances leading to opening night in one, digitally-unbroken take, making room along the way for Method asshole Michael Shiner (Method asshole Edward Norton)–who steals both the play Birdman is about and the play-within-a-play conceit of the movie by stealing the movie–and tons of narrative melodramatics, including a neurotic leading lady (Naomi Watts), Riggan's burnout daughter (Emma Stone), and his stressed-out lawyer/manager (Zach Galifianakis). The whole story roils with desperation and disappointment, and the film-as-object does the same–the transparency between those two things (cine-reality and sad-truth-of-it reality) cited repeatedly in the screenplay-by-committee in exhausting, self-abnegating fashion. Birdman is an incredible bore. The closest analogue in feel is Todd Solondz's unfortunate riposte to his detractors, Storytelling, but at least that one wasn't all tarted up in attention-grabbing technical pandering. Birdman is about as clever as that Blues Traveler song: the tedious offense of idiots calling you an idiot.

Herzog: The Collection [Blu-ray Disc] – Heart of Glass (1976)

August 19, 20141970s, 2014, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Werner Herzog, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Scream/Shout! Factory, West Germany

Herz aus Glas
***½/****
DVD – Image A Sound B Commentary B
BD – Image A- Sound A- Commentary B
starring Josef Bierbichler, Stefan Güttler, Clemens Scheitz, Volker Prechtel
written and directed by Werner Herzog

by Walter Chaw Hias (Josef Bierbichler) is a shepherd and a prophet, and his pronouncements pepper Heart of Glass like edicts from God. He defines the structure, in so much as there is one, of a picture that drifts in tone between Werner Herzog’s nightmarish, nostalgic Bavarian romanticism and a certain variety of gothic surrealism. Indeed, Heart of Glass, while hewing close to Herzog’s themes of the insufficiency of myth as a means to obscure truths about horror and beauty as well as of the artist as solitary, Byronic voyager, appears to be Herzog’s play at the stylization of Buñuel. After an aged glassblower dies in a small village, the out-of-time surviving villagers, reliant on the “ruby glass” that was the artisan’s specialty, spend the balance of the piece spiralling in a maddening gyre to divine the secret of the formula. Like Aguirre: The Wrath of God, the story behind the scenes–that Herzog hypnotized his cast daily to create a trancelike (glassy-eyed, if you will) mien–has become almost better known than the details of the film itself.

Herzog: The Collection [Blu-ray Disc] – Even Dwarfs Started Small (1971)

July 29, 20141970s, 2014, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Directors: Werner Herzog, DVD, Esoterica, Horror, Scream/Shout! Factory, West Germany

Evendwarfs2

Auch Zwerge haben klein angefangen
***½/****
DVD – Image A Sound B+ Commentary A
BD – Image A- Sound B+ Commentary A
starring Helmut Döring, Gerd Gickel, Paul Glauer, Erna Gschwendtner
written and directed by Werner Herzog

by Walter Chaw Even Dwarfs Started Small opens with a disquieting montage featuring a young girl rending live birds with her teeth that also culminates in the image of a chicken eating another chicken (shades of Magritte’s 1927 painting “Pleasure”). Both actions speak to a sort of insensate savagery, the divorce between the Freudian Id and Ego so favoured by the surrealists–and in setting the film in a fictitious place populated entirely by the little people of the title, it touches on the surrealist belief that non-Western civilizations were closer to an undifferentiated nature. The story proper concerns the uprising of a “Prisoner”-like colony against an ineffectual, Kafkaesque godhead (Pepi Hermine) and the Institution he represents. Rebelling against the imprisonment of leader Pepe (Gerd Gickel, tied to a chair throughout), the rebels devolve from a semi-organized protest into bedlam, crucifying monkeys, organizing cockfights, and, in one of the most hopeless conclusions in film, watching as rebel leader Hombre (Helmut Döring) laughs until he chokes at the sight of a defecating camel.

Persona (1966) [The Criterion Collection] – Dual-Format Edition

April 29, 2014****/****, 1960s, 2014, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Ingmar Bergman, Documentary, Drama, Esoterica, FFC Must-Own, Sweden, The Criterion Collection

Persona1

PERSONA
****/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullman
written and directed by Ingmar Bergman

LIV & INGMAR
**½/****
directed by Dheeraj Akolkar

by Bryant Frazer In early 1965, under the influence of the French New Wave, half dead from pneumonia and subsequent antibiotic poisoning, and depressed by more than just the view from his Stockholm hospital bed, Ingmar Bergman cobbled together some ideas for a small movie about two women. Addled by the administrative headaches of his position as the head of Sweden’s Royal Dramatic Theatre–and probably discouraged by the frosty reception that greeted his recent comedy and first colour film, All These Women–he felt a small movie was the only kind he would be able to make. And so he started putting together, in his head, a modest drama. He imagined two women comparing hands. One of them, he decided, would be talking, and the other would be silent. It went from there.

Weekend (1967) [The Criterion Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

January 30, 2014****/****, 1960s, 2014, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Drama, Esoterica, France, Road Movie, Satire, The Criterion Collection

WEEK END
****/**** Image A- Sound B Extras B
starring Mireille Darc, Jean Yanne, Georges Staquet, Juliet Berto
written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard

by Angelo Muredda “The horror of the bourgeois can only be overcome with more horror.” So says a militant cannibal as he stands over the remains of one such bourgeois husk late in Weekend, Jean-Luc Godard’s farewell to the alienated pop art and American genre gerrymandering of his early period. As the line about horrors piled upon horrors implies, Weekend is nasty, as valedictory addresses go–a scorched-earth attack on France under Charles de Gaulle that finds nearly all of its citizens massacred in car crashes of their own design and converted into consumable products, namely food. The humanism of minor tragedies like Vivre sa vie and the heedless joy of Frank Tashlin homages like Une femme est une femme has here curdled into a new, ugly form. Although its title suggests a world of leisure and free play, one doesn’t enjoy Weekend so much as one endures it.

Room 237 (2013) – Blu-ray Disc (UPDATED)

December 20, 20132013, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Stanley Kubrick, Documentary, Esoterica, Stephen King

**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
directed by Rodney Ascher

“A story of the supernatural cannot be taken apart and analyzed too closely. The ultimate test of its rationale is whether it is good enough to raise the hairs on the back of your neck. If you submit it to a completely logical and detailed analysis it will eventually appear absurd.”
–Stanley Kubrick, interviewed by Michel Ciment, Kubrick: The Definitive Edition, Part 4

by Bryant Frazer Did director Stanley Kubrick encode The Shining with an admission that he helped create phony footage of the Apollo moon-landing in 1969? Well, of course not. That’s nuts. It’s a cockamamie argument. And it’s one of several cockamamie arguments advanced by viewers given a platform for their unconventional theories in Room 237, an odd duck of a documentary about the conclusions reached by five different Kubrick fans upon very close analysis of The Shining.

SDFF ’13: Borgman

November 26, 2013****/****, 2013, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Esoterica, Film Festivals, Netherlands, Thriller

****/****
starring Jan Bijvoet, Hadewych Minis, Jeroen Perceval, Sara Hjort Ditlevsen
written and directed by Alex van Warmerdam

by Walter Chaw Screening at the SDFF and now travelling with the Alamo Fantastic Fest, Alex van Warmerdam’s Borgman gets the Yorgos Lanthimos Award for Most Devastating Absurdist Metaphor for Familial Dysfunction. Smart as hell and unapologetically surreal, its central motivating image is a tableaux vivant of Henry Fuseli’s “The Nightmare,” tipping off not just the ethos of the film, but also that there may be running threads concerning mothers (Fuseli was Mary Wollstonecraft’s lover), monsters (Mary being the mother of Mary “Frankenstein” Shelley), the empowerment of women (the mother again), nightmares, of course, and maybe Romanticism, if only in the picture’s awareness and perversion of nature. Demanding a specific kind of active spectatorship, Borgman is a complex film with heat, and somewhere in the middle of it there’s a performance within a performance that ends with a declaration of intent that stands as one of the most existentially chilling things in cinema this year.

SDFF ’13: Go Down Death

November 5, 20132013, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Esoterica, Film Festivals

½*/**** written and directed by Aaron Schimberg by Walter Chaw Okay, I'm gonna take a stab at this one. Aaron Schimberg's aggressively pretentious Go Down Death is an attempt to speak to the idea that communal storytelling is the key way in which humans communicate culture. Ostensibly based on a lost folklorist's collected works, it acts like a Guy Maddin, looks like early Jim Jarmusch, and really doesn't work at all, because if the film is a variation on a theme, it's a riff that goes on way, way too long. I spent an evening once watching mushroom prints, stained…