Suspiria by Dario Argento
Incredible film featuring disorienting sets, a beautiful colour palette, kind of awful acting, and nonsensical decisions, dialogue, and plot progressions. It's all about atmosphere and building a wall around each 5 minutes and then appreciating that section for everything it is, or just slipping into its dream logic and forgetting where you are etc. For extra awesome Goblin played live to it.
5/5
V/H/S/2 by Simon Barrett, Adam Wingard, Eduardo Sánchez, Gregg Hale, Gareth Huw Evans, Timo Tjahjanto, and Jason Eisener
Entertaining anthology film. Each one is restricted to ~15 minutes playtime, so they're over quick enough when they aren't so good. Much better than V/H/S' bro-centric fear-and-then-exploitation-of-women, the best one in that anthology is maybe just as good as the worst one here. I think there's an awareness of how silly the 'found-footage' thing is in V/H/S/2, as only the last film really goes for it. Worth it for Safe Haven alone, directed by Gareth Huw Evans (The Raid) and Timo Tjahjanto. Don't read anything about it, just go watch it before you hear something that'll diminish its impact.
3/5
Outrage Beyond by Takeshi Kitano
Outrage was an exercise in restraint, a cyclical, emotionally 0 series of events set in a world where every decision is informed by greed or revenge, and every reaction is the same. Outrage Beyond maintains its predecessor's leanness and efficiency, but this time around its vengeful reactions actually feel like something other than mere procedure. Having someone and something to cheer for probably makes it all more morally corrupt as the detached violence of the first one always felt bad, whereas here the audience cheers and boos in a state of total blood lust.
3.5/5
Mud by Jeff Nichols
I've got to rent some dvds by Jeff Nichols when this is all over. Mud's world is an understanding one where no person or decision gets judged in any way and everyone's just getting by or whatever, kinda like The Wire pre-Marlo.
4/5
You're Next by Adam Wingard
Omg Cassie from Home and Away beating up bad guys! Wingard's film in V/H/S/2 was knowingly stupid and although its ideas were effective (the more you think about a ghost the stronger it gets, what's under the bedsheet, etc), its execution wasn't the best. You're Next is a home-invasion thriller with legit funny seemingly improv comedy scenes and a strong female lead. Sorta a more focused, less obvious Cabin in the Woods explicitly dealing with the slasher genre. The end is a nice nod to a horror classic too.
4/5
Prince Avalanche by David Gordon Green
Green half returning to character-driven southern gothic stuff, half 'cause he keeps it funny. Beautifully shot and genuinely heartwarming- he understands that losers don't win at the end of the day but their lives mean as much as anyone else's, and so Prince Avalanche sorta employs Harmony Korine-ish sequences to that end, blending an honest realism and grit with moments of intuitive, transcendent beauty.
4/5
Upstream Colour by Shane Carruth
2010s professional discontentment and the linkages between the broken and alone- with eachother, with the universe. The universe sections are maybe too cryptic when the message is so clear anyway. The eachother sections are beautifully done, taking photographic and editing cues from Malick's The Tree of Life.
3/5
Cheap Thrills by E.L. Katz
It was sweet seeing Pat Healy and Sara Paxton in a film together again after The Innkeepers sorta broke my heart. Cheap Thrills is an exploitation film that very quickly has its protagonist sever his ties to our world (his wife, his responsibilities), making everything consequence free and so infinitely less engaging.
2/5
To the Wonder by Terrence Malick
He had to make his less-than-great film at some stage, I guess, and I'm one of those weirdos who thinks The New World was genius. Follows his new thing of autobiography rather than genre (The Tree of Life), playing a simple love story out chronologically and, yeah, simply. Sort of asks why doesn't love work? and responds with i don't know, here's some moments of ecstasy that in reality can't ever be maintained.
3/5
Maniac by Franck Khalfoun
Great example of the Streisand effect at work. Ban a movie and people who didn't care about it will all of a sudden want to see it and they will find a way to do so. Strangely beautiful and thoroughly nauseating. You've seen worse but maybe not through the eyes of the killer. Awesome soundtrack halfway between Drive and Hotline Miami.
2.5/5
The Crowd by King Vidor
With Wellington's SMP Ensemble playing the score live composed by Johannes Contag. Largely neglected in its day as talkies were becoming more popular, a shame given its incredible sweeping camerawork, expressionistic interplay between light&dark shapes, and sweetly simple moral of who-gives-a-shit-about-the-crowd or the-upstart's-no-better-than-the-clown-he-scoffs-at.
3.5/5
Das merkwürdige Kätzchen (The Strange Little Cat) by Ramon Zürcher
A simple day-in-the-life of a family. Choreographed like Tati where each scene is filled with minor-yet-major actions, detailed and sort of claustrophobic. Writing reminded me of Infinite Jest's familial conversations where two people talking to one another means two different conversations or even two concurrent monologues. Disconnection etc, we see the mother subtly break down wearing a bullshit smile and longing for that 'clean well lit place' she read about somewhere but just can't find genuine solace in.
4/5
A Field in England by Ben Wheatley
Surrealistic historical black comedy lays out conversations between God and the occult, feudalism and capitalism, books and blood, further filled with symbols and recurrent gestures for those wanting to delve deeper. For the rest it's just beautifully monochromatic and paced like a daydream in spite of its flashes of brutality. Probably helped by its sense of humour, A Field in England is at its most hallucinatory when we watch someone buying into his own dislogic and becoming the hero of his own fake-ass good v. evil situation, rather than when Wheatley tries to transmit this perspective to his audience and then it's flashy formal experimentation for the sake of flashy formal experimentation.
3.5/5
Only God Forgives by Nicolas Winding Refn
(not part of the festival but saw it on one night off so feels the same)
An ambitious nightmare mess about impotence. Hated it the night I saw it, loved it the next morning!
4.5/5
Leviathan by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel
Had to miss it 'cause I had a ticket to James Blake whose show was so boring I actually felt myself ageing and dying every second I stood there
:(/5
Ernest & Celestine by Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar, and Benjamin Renner
Wanted to die, went to bed instead
regret/5
The Act of Killing by Joshua Oppenheimer
The surreal banality of evil
4/5
The Dance of Reality by Alejandro Jodorowsky
It actually feels like Jodorowsky's being generous, giving so much colour, humour, and humanity up for the viewer in every single scene!
4/5
(not part of the festival but saw it on one night off so feels the same)
An ambitious nightmare mess about impotence. Hated it the night I saw it, loved it the next morning!
4.5/5
Leviathan by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel
Had to miss it 'cause I had a ticket to James Blake whose show was so boring I actually felt myself ageing and dying every second I stood there
:(/5
Ernest & Celestine by Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar, and Benjamin Renner
Wanted to die, went to bed instead
regret/5
The Act of Killing by Joshua Oppenheimer
The surreal banality of evil
4/5
The Dance of Reality by Alejandro Jodorowsky
It actually feels like Jodorowsky's being generous, giving so much colour, humour, and humanity up for the viewer in every single scene!
4/5
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