Suspiria Cert: 18 / 153 mins / Dir. Luca Guadagnino / Trailer
Let's be honest, if you're having a production meeting and one of the outcomes is that Thom Yorke should do the music for your film, there's a good chance that you're making something which is going to test my fucking patience. Suspiria is impeccably made, but I'd be lying if I said there weren't long stretches during which I was thoroughly bored.
The plot: In 1977, a young American woman runs away from her religiously strict family to a dance school in Berlin, right next to the wall which divides the city.
Turns out it's run by witches. There we go.
BREAKING MY HEART Now to be fair, my main problem here is that I don't 'do' dance. I appreciate the coordination and precision, and I understand that there's emotion and symbolism contained within, and that's all well explained within the film itself. But it's just not a visual language I understand*1. They may as well have the characters speaking in tongues, frankly.
A point of note could also be that I haven't seen Dario Argento's 1977 original movie, but in all honest that shouldn't matter - this is a remake, not a sequel. I'm under the impression that this is a relatively faithful interpretation and expansion of that, so any issues I had with the new film are likely to stem from the original.
SHAKING MY CONFIDENCE Another problem could be that Dakota Johnson is interesting to watch, as is Tilda Swinton, but everybody else? Really not so much. The overall grotesquery is nicely escalated, but it's like a two and a half hour episode of The League Of Gentlemen without any jokes. Any which way, Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria is too long. I expected self-indulgence, I'd just like to be more engaged while that's happening (cf. Mandy).
Don't get me wrong, I admire Suspiria a great deal. But over two and half hours, it's going to take more than chin-stroking to keep me onboard. Besides, at least I'm not the guy in front who sighed audible for the last 120 minutes of the film.
Oh, and since the film prides itself on its technical prowess, I'm just going to say it: the drop-shadow on the subtitles is too far from the source lettering, there's a gap between the two and it's distracting as fuck. Yeah, I do typography, not dance…
I imagine it'll struggle even harder to capture your attention in the living room, unless you're already onboard and are the kind of viewer who'd normally watch it in the cinema anyway.
No.
Hahahaha, absolutely.
There isn't.
Level 1: Prosthetics makeup designer Mark Coulier also worked on Attack Of The Clones, and since Suspiria has some truly outstanding effects, I'm counting that as a direct link.
*1 Nor is it a series of movements I can fully understand, ie - I don't dance. Not that I watched the film with a sense of growing envy you understand, but at no point was I thinking 'yeah, I know that move'. The dancing itself is fine, is what I'm trying to say. It's more the fact that it meant little to me in scenes which weren't directly a telekinetic voodoo sequence. [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Well, then. The 2018 British Horror Film Festival took place at Cineworld Leicester Square on Sat 24th November, and I was lucky enough to see some of its content. I've done a quick roundup of some of the short films on offer here. There were things to watch, there were questions to be asked and I'm delighted to note that most of my pointers from last year seem to have been taken onboard. Nice to know I'm not wasting my time, at least.
Part of all this was Rob Heydon's Isabelle, the story of Larissa (Amanda Crew) and Matt (Adam Brody), a young couple expecting a baby who move into a new house in New York State*2. When Larissa miscarries, the trauma and isolation she feels is heightened by the strange young wheelchair-bound woman in the neighbouring house, Isabelle (Zoë Belkin), who always seems to be watching from the upstairs window. And none of this is helped by the girl's reclusive mother Ann (Sheila McCarthy) and the hushed whispers in the neighbourhood about the house…
First things first, this wasn't a hate-watch. Second things second, I didn't hate it. Third things third, but I have issues. Or rather, the film has…
NEIGHBOUR Oh, mate. When your supernatural neighbour is actually, really, actual cackling, you're probably trying too hard. Yet conversely, not hard enough. It's fine having the creepy villain sitting in the upstairs window next door, but like the Eiffel Tower in a bad euro-thriller, she's apparently visible from every room in Larissa and Matt's house.
The film feels let down by its own jump-scares and desaturated colour-palette. Blumhouse have already flogged that horse to death and I'm certain Isabelle had more to offer at an early stage. Heydon can't quite make up his mind what story he wants to tell, or how it needs to be told. Between the eerie nursery, the near-death experience, the Samara-Lite™ across the way, the third-act exposition coming from a series of old newspaper articles and a possession sub-plot which isn't sure if it's based around fanatical Catholicism or the occult, there's a disappointing lack of anything actually new.
Oh, and the baddie has glowing red eyes. That's how we know she's bad.
SULLIVAN Isabelle is structurally sound but feels like it's bringing nothing to the party. It has the air of a short film which has been expanded out to feature-length*3, but then doesn't have the extra writing to properly explore the psychological roots of it characters. On top of this jumble, we get occasional scenes from inside next door's house which telegraph the backstory before our protagonists find out, so that it's not clear whose perspective this is all coming from.
The film runs on rails like a ghost train made by people who have only ridden on other ghost trains. The story's big reveal takes its sweet time coming, which is ironic since it's been telegraphed since the first appearance of The Ghoul Next Door. Mark Korven's score is intrusive, not bad per se, but just generic fare played too loudly and too often. And Finder Spyder, the in-movie search engine equivalent of the Wilhelm Scream, for when you know in advance that Google will just say no.
Oh, and then there's some tacked-on, batshit-crazy Sliding Doors type ending which can only be because a) writer Donald Martin wanted a happier ending than the one the screenplay was otherwise headed to, or b) writer Donald Martin thinks this might leave it open to… a… a sequel (quiet at the back).
SON AND DAUGHTER I actually felt slightly bad about watching Isabelle in a cinema (although it was thankfully the one of the day where the creators weren't present in the room), because this is otherwise destined straight for the DVD shelf in Sainsbury's. And not the one with the chart releases on it.
The worst thing is that the emotional cornerstone of Isabelle is grief, with Amanda Crew and Adam Brody both turning in really strong performances and moments of genuine upset. To a lesser extent there's a parallel story playing out over at Isabelle's house, although that's really not explored. All of this seems like it's gone to waste as a lot of heavyweight issues and themes are papered over with a cheap horror flick, the very opposite of what the genre is best at.
Fun fact:Isabelle won the award for Best Feature Film at the British Horror Film Festival 2018.
Unrelated fact: Because the screening of The Exorcism Of Karen Walker was cancelled at the 11th hour*4, Isabelle was the only feature film to play at the British Horror Film Festival 2018.
Make of that what you will.
All of the other suburban horror-flicks, let's be fair.
It's not.
Stream it, tops.
Nope.
I've you've watched it as well, probably not.
There isn't.
Level 2: Amanda Crew was in that Age Of Adaline with Harrison 'Solo' Ford.
*1 Well, the rating on my ticket and on Cineworld's website says it's an 18, but the film isn't actually listed on the BBFC site yet which means it isn't officially rated. It plays like a 15, anyway. [ BACK ]
*2 Yeah, I don't quite understand how a film from a Canadian director, with a Canadian cast and set in America is being presented at the British Horror Film Festival, either. Although this sort of thing happened last year, too. [ BACK ]
*3 Well, 80 minutes. I mean, 90 is the rock-bottom standard for a feature, but 80 (including the end-credits, remember) just feels like it isn't trying. Yet at the same time, there's a lot of padding which could come out with no adverse affect (probably the opposite, in fact). [ BACK ]
*4 And this is in no way intended to put down the BHFF, but what was last year a multi-day festival with four feature screenings plus shorts on the one I attended, seems to have become a one-day event with twelve shorts and one full-length movie (due to the aforementioned cancellation). Less of a Festival™ and more of a Hiring Out Screen 2 For The Day™ with some trophies in the corner. And while it was moderately busy, the screenings I was at weren't sold out and seemed to be mostly populated by people coming to watch their own movies, although I suspect that's a Film Festival thing in general. I just get the impression that either interest in the BHFF is waning, or it was organised at the last minute. Frightfest doesn't have this problem. There, I said it. [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Mandy Cert: 18 / 121 mins / Dir. Panos Cosmatos / Trailer
It does seem that every new Nic Cage film arrives accompanied by the descriptor 'going full Nic Cage' as its selling point. Obviously the guy can't be trapped in an ever-escalating gyroscope of cinema, but it does sometimes feel like movies are being written with him specifically in mind.
This offering from director and co-writer Panos Cosmatos sees Cage star as Red, a logger residing in the Californian mountains with his artist girlfriend Mandy (Andrea Riseborough) in 1983. When the members of a cult pass through the backwater, their leader Jeremiah (Linus Roache) becomes obsessed with Mandy and orders his followers to kidnap her to join the group. Mandy is resistant to both the ideology and the psychotropic drugs forced upon her, and in a fit of pique Jeremiah orders her to be killed while Red watches. Left for dead, our protagonist frees himself and embarks on a rampaging odyssey of brutal revenge, where the boundaries of reality become as warped as the morality of his nemeses…
CAGE And it's glorious. Two hours of extravagantly outlandish, glorious carnage paying homage to space rock and pulp fantasy novels. Because obviously in a movie where cultists play an ocarina to summon a gang of knock-off Cenobites on quad bikes without batting an eyelid, Nic Cage is going to wear a Ray-Ban Aviators as safety goggles while he forges himself a battle-axe, before later eschewing that weapon to have a chainsaw fight. Everything about this screams fuck yeah.
Mandy is the sort of movie where the viewer never loses track of what's going on, but if it was paused and they were asked to give a summary probably wouldn't know where to start. It's a ponderous, vigorous, hallucinatory companion piece to Drive Angry with notes of Rocky Horror and The Hills Have Eyes. It would be self-indulgent if it wasn't so gleefully volatile.
GOFFE As much as the film effects an air of schlocky trash, Mandy can't disguise the precision and joy with which it's been made. As if Robert Rodriguez, Eli Roth and Darren Aronofsky raised a child in some twisted parody of Three Men And A Baby and then unleashed it upon the world. And that's not to say this is an exploitative, mindless gorefest - it's not. But it clearly loves the films which are and has channeled that fondness through the prism of Nic Cage's desensitised fury.
The film is split into acts, each presented with their own uniquely styled (yet visually continuous) title card. Cinematographer Benjamin Loeb treats the story like his own fever dream, with neither a prop nor pixel out of place in each meticulously constructed shot. Whether it's the blood-hued interior of a stark, angular wooden church, an alien cosmos resting over the forest skyline or just Nic Cage screaming on the toilet in his pants as he necks vodka from the bottle, you'll be hard pushed to find more arresting imagery this year in such an accessible format*1.
SHERIFF'S BADGE Mandy is precisely the sort of thing I enjoy travelling into London to watch, and it quickly became apparent why this didn't play at my local cinema (not that I'd expected it to). At this late stage, the cage fight*2 for the Film Of The Year award just got a bit more crowded.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Music has been the hand-in-hand partner of film since cinema began, certainly long before studios were able to synchronise dialogue to match their magical moving images. Even something as humble as lone pianist seated at the front of an auditorium is enough to enhance what we see; to raise the tension, to pull on the heart-strings, to make us laugh before a punchline has even landed. Music underscores film, literally as well as metaphorically.
Yet over the decades, relatively few musical accompaniments have achieved the status of their best-known visual guardians. But occasionally a soundtrack comes along whose cues become as iconic as the characters they usher onto the screen, whose tracks become as familiar as classic posters and publicity shots of film stars. And if a list was compiled of standout scores which fit that bill, you can bet that the name of composer/conductor John Williams would appear on it more than once.
ALBERT In March 1977, Williams assembled the 84-piece London Symphony Orchestra at Anvil Studios, Buckinghamshire. Together they recorded the Academy Award-winning soundtrack to George Lucas' Star Wars. Legends were forged in '77. 41 years later, the LSO reconvenes*1 17-or-so miles away at London's Royal Albert Hall under the auspices of conductor Ludwig Wicki, for a series of special screenings of that original film. While the audience watches adventure unfurl in front of them, a live orchestral performance takes place on the stage beneath. The cinematic circle is now complete.
This is Star Wars: In Concert.
The capacity audience quietens and the house lights lower. While nothing can be heard over the live reproduction of Alfred Newman's 20th Century Fox fanfare, what's even more powerful is the feeling in the air of goosebumps raising on 5,000 pairs of arms. A brief round of applause erupts while the blue-on-black title card sets the galactic scene, then we're off. Whereas the promotional material and programme are graced with Drew Struzan's 1997 Star Wars Special Edition artwork, the version of the film which plays is the 2011 Blu-ray cut, for optimum picture quality (and Artoo hiding behind magic rocks, admittedly).
HAROLD And what an amazing ride this is. Star Wars in its purest form, yet wholly unique. But beneath the novelty of of this cinematic/concert duality lies the clinical co-ordination which makes it work as a package. Soundtracks are recorded over weeks, not hours, and are rarely designed to be played live in continuous succession. A musician's precision is as important as their stamina*2, here. This concert has to 'run to time' and dovetail perfectly with the events on screen. No drift is permissible, neither fast nor slow. As noted above, John Williams' cues are characters in themselves, and need to enter and exit the stage right on time, just like the actors.
This is where Wicki comes in, expertly co-ordinating the huge ensemble, being their anchor yet driving them forward. Gathering all safely together as we head for the Battle of Yavin IV, to restore freedom to the galaxy.
And because this isn't a regular track-by-track performance, there are no real gaps for the audience to applaud again until the end of the first half, the beginning of the second and the closing credits*3. The show comes with an interval once the Millennium Falcon docks in the Death Star, a chance for the audience to reflect on their experience so far and the players to take a proper break (re. the earlier point about stamina).
LANCE As with any finalised production, the other craft to admire is the mixing. Although the soundtrack appears at the same moments and with the same levels of intensity as the version of the movie we all know, great care is taken to preserve the balance between the pre-recorded film audio and the live music. As was John Williams' original intention, the orchestra are here to enhance the film, not overpower it. Anyone watching Star Wars for the first time in this setting would enjoy it for all the same reasons, cinematically.
The only parts of the score not covered live are the two diegetic tracks played inside Chalmun's Cantina by Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes. It's unclear whether this is because the instruments required for the calypso/jazz fusion aren't part of the standard orchestral setup, or just because the volume and structure of this music changes frequently as crucial dialogue is layered over the top. Either way, it's a chance for the performers to take a short breather before the action resumes (and in the case of the brass section, for some members to cheekily crane their necks and watch five minutes of the movie).
What's perhaps most surprising is how many short stretches of the film - many with key moments - feature no music at all, relying instead on dialogue and Ben Burtt's array of immersive sound effects, as all motion ceases from the orchestra but for the turning of pages.
STRETCH An extra frisson of excitement comes from seeing the string players ready their bows toward the end of a quiet scene, or watching the light from the screen catch the brass instruments as they're raised into position.
The most challenging part is not getting caught up in the film then forgetting that this is first and foremost a concert.
Because in the thick of battle, whether it's the dust and grit of Tatooine or the echoing hallways of an armoured space station, the intrinsic link between the story, atmosphere and score is indistinguishable from 'the real thing'. Because this is the real thing.
From start to finish, Ludwig doesn't speak to the audience. That isn't needed. He and the LSO speak for themselves, and for John Williams, in their own collective and distinctive voice.
Star Wars: In Concert is a triumph on artistic, emotional and technical levels. If you have the means, if you get the opportunity, I can give his production no higher recommendation…
Structurally, other events in the In Concert series.
It is
Although it's not a cheap night out.
If this were available on watch-at-home formats, I'd be on it like a mynock on an unshielded power coupling.
Yes.
Most people stopped trying to disagree with me in pubs about Star Wars many moons ago.
There is.
Level 0: It is Star Wars.
…but if you wanted to go round the houses with it, Ludwig Wicki conducted the score for Jurassic World 2, a flick that featured Kamil Lemieszewski, who also appeared in that King Arthur film alongside Geoff Bell, the actor also known for his work in RocknRolla, which starred Thandie Newton who was of course in Run Fatboy Run alongside Peter Serafinowicz, who was in Guardians Of The Galaxy with Spencer Wilding, who rocked up in Jupiter Ascending, a movie whose score was conducted by… Maestro Ludwig Wicki.
*1 Alas, the performing lineup of the LSO didn't include anyone from the original soundtrack recording sessions. I checked. This rolling turnover pretty much makes the London Symphony Orchestra the classical equivalent of The Drifters. Yeah, old school mate. You thought I was going to make a Sugababes reference, didn't you? Pah![ BACK ]
*2 Performing in an orchestra is a brutal business of course, where young musicians (many snatched from their families as children) are meekly herded into the pit and worked mercilessly until they drop dead and are methodically replaced, often mid-show or recording. And when you buy a soundtrack album or concert ticket, you are supporting this cruel industry. I will not be silent about this, the world needs to know. [ BACK ]
*3 You may not be au fait with classical music concerts (and that's absolutely fine, I'm not either), but even patrons who acknowledge the on-screen reminder before the show to fully appreciate the performance by staying until the very end, should be aware that it's also rather poor form to head for the exit while the orchestra are still taking their bows. When the band leave the stage, then you can be on your way. It's just good manners. [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Well, fourth-quarter is the graveyard shift in the cinematic calendar, and the dumping ground for many an oddity that film distributors have no other slot for. And they don't come much odder or more dumped than director and co-writer Crispian Mills sophomore creature-com, Slaughterhouse Rulez.
When a place becomes unexpectedly available at a prestigious boarding school, working class northern teenager Don (Finn Cole*1) is encouraged to apply by his socially-aspirant mum. Struggling to adapt to the norms of private education, Finn gradually forms a guarded friendship with fellow sixth-formers Clemsie (Hermione Corfield*2) and Willoughby (Asa Butterfield*3). But things take a sinister turn when it's revealed that the mysterious headmaster (Michael Sheen) is in cahoots with a fracking company, and their drilling at the edge of the school's grounds has awoken something - or things. With teacher Meredith Houseman*4 (Simon Pegg) and environmental protestor Woody (Nick Frost) thrown into the mix, traditional allegiances have to be discarded as a weekend of off-term debauchery turns into a comic fight for survival...
HAMMERING Yeah, it's not great. Not great at all. The main problem is that the setup itself feels laboured, so no script coming off the back of that is ever going to sparkle, and so neither are the performances. The film spends the first twenty minutes not quite getting over its own joke that a school would be named Slaughterhouse*5, hammering home the archaic eccentricities of British private education like no-one else had noticed.
Cole, Corfield and Butterworth are basically fine, but none of them really have the acting chops at this point to lead the movie's young cast, even as an ensemble. At the other end of the scale, Pegg, Frost and Sheen are left to mug and autopilot through their (largely completely separate) scenes. All of the above need firmer direction, as does the screenplay itself. Instead we get a loose collection of weak sketches from the man who brought us A Fantastic Fear of Everything (34%).
ESCHERING The more creative the film tries to be with its monster scenes (of which there are surprisingly few, for a monster movie), the cheaper it all feels. Predator-lite heat vision and shadow-play can't disguise the obvious budgetary constraints, and the creature shots we do get strike an uneven balance between admittedly strong props with severely limited movement and fluid-but-murky-as-hell CGI.
More a clunky homage to teen horror than actually being one itself, there's little in the way of thrills and even less in shocks. A few smirks are to be had in the script, but no actual laughs. It's hard to know exactly what Slaughterhouse Rulez is trying to be, and as a result it's often hard to know exactly how badly it's failing.
DONALDING Monsters or otherwise, the movie as a whole feels uninspired. Even with its heavy-handed fracking plot, you'd swear this had been sitting on a shelf since 2006, when Pegg and Frost were still enough of a thing to draw audiences with their presence alone.
The fact that Mills continually lifts beats from Edgar Wright's Cornetto trilogy while under-using those films' leading stars tells the audience how thin on the ground the ideas are. Slaughterhouse Rulez wants to be Harry Potter for fans of The World's End, but comes out more like Percy Jackson in the vein of Lesbian Vampire Killers.
DUCKING Stories with a young leading cast aim to transport the audience back to imagined ideals of their youth, with camaraderie and adventure. Horror-tinged movies of this ilk either want the viewer to think that they'd love to be in that situation with the heroes, or just be relieved they're in the cinema watching at a safe distance. But for all the two-hour runtime and backstory bombardment, there's no immersion here.
The story isn't engaging enough to be a spectator-led affair, instead feeling like none of this matters. It's faintly ironic that the film is set in a public school since the it feels like it's been written by a drama student 6th Former with no outside social contacts.
Slaughterhouse Rulez is never flat-out awful, but its waste of a decent cast is an affront to the acting profession. There's the suggestion that this probably felt a lot more coherent and meaningful on-set, when everything was being experienced in a non-linear order and the final product was still a hazy dream. But hazy dreams produce hazy results, and this film should be included in the Media Studies module teaching that very lesson…
The impact will be lessened even more in your living room, but it's the natural home of this.
Hahahaha, hell no.
That's entirely possible, yes.
Not that I heard. And in a flick like this, it would likely be front-and-centre if it were there.
Level 1: Well aside from some of the most cack-handed Star Wars references you've ever seen committed to film, Unkar Plutt is in this. So is Tallie. It's no consolation.
*3 Asa Butterfield is 21. These are your teen-leads. It's like Grease never happened. [ BACK ]
*4 These really are the characters' names, by the way, I'm not making this up. [ BACK ]
*5 The title is (from what I can tell) effectively a portmanteau pun on Tom Sharpe's Cambridge-satire Porterhouse Blue and Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, with the mis-spelling of 'Rules' lending the same air of intellectual confidence instilled by a hairdressing business with "Kutz" in its name. [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
