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  • 05 Oct

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    Classic Horror Movies for People Who Don’t Like Gore

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    We’re into October now, so expect to see a concentration of posts about horror films from us this month – Bob has already started his annual horror capsule posts (see part 1 here). This particular post actually originates thanks to a friend asking me if I had a post anywhere talking about classic horror films that relied on atmosphere and creepy chills rather than gore and jump scares. Given that creepy atmospheric horror films are my favorite kind (in fact, the only kind of horror films I’d watch until a couple of years ago), I happily said I’d put one together this week, just in time to plan some classic Halloween viewing for the month of October. I’ve chosen fifteen films, ranged between atmospheric, disturbing, creepy, culty, and just plain enjoyable, trying to stay a bit off the beaten path, though there are a few quite well-known films in here. (Note that some may have a modicum of bloodiness, especially moving into the color films of the ’60s (Hammer, Bava, Corman), but it’s very restrained and unrealistic compared with the gorefests of later years.) I’m sure there are a lot more than just these – please feel free to add more in the comments. I’d love to find more films like these myself, since, as I said, they’re my favorite.

    Haxan (1922)

    There are a number of good silent film choices here, but this one is a little under-the-radar unless you’re a real classic horror or silent film aficionado. Benjamin Christensen’s Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages purports to be a documentary depicting the history of witchcraft from the middle ages through the Puritan era and to modern day (which Christensen connects via the modern “hysteric” – his thesis, such as it is, is that witches in earlier eras suffered from misdiagnosed mental illness, hardly an original thought with him), but really, it’s an excuse to gleefully show flights of fancy into the devil’s lair, detail objects of torture, and basically let his imagination run wild. It’s stylistically flamboyant, too, and though a lot of it is humorous now (the modern day parts are particularly earnest in a laughable way), a good portion of it is genuinely creepy and it’s definitely an unforgettable visual experience.
    1922 Denmark. Director: Benjamin Christensen. Starring: Benjamin Christensen, Maren Pedersen.
    Other silent films to try: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu, The Phantom of the Opera.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 05 Oct

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    DVD Triage: Week of October 4

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    Big week for Blu-ray this week, as a bunch of films from Disney to Tarantino getting hi-def upgrades. A couple of notable new releases on both indie and mainstream fronts, but nothing of consequence at all in classic releases, aside from a couple of Criterion Blu-ray upgrades. Can’t win them all. As expected, a whole lot of cool stuff hit Instant Watch on the 1st and 2nd, so check those out.

    New Release Picks of the Week

    Submarine
    Just when it seems like quirky indie films have about run their course, Submarine comes out and wins critics over – I haven’t seen it myself yet, though I’m dying to, but according to all reports, the film transcends its apparent genre with surprising depth.
    2010 UK. Director: Richard Ayoade. Starring: Noah Taylor, Paddy Considine.
    Amazon DVD | Amazon Blu-ray | Netflix

    Fast Five
    The fifth in the Fast and the Furious series didn’t interest me any more than any of the others, but it certainly got solid reviews and box office, with people loving the shift from straight racing to a more heist-based crime story.
    2011 USA. Director: Justin Lin. Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Vin Diesel, Paul Walker.
    Amazon DVD | Amazon Blu-ray/DVD | Netflix

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 04 Oct

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    Finite Focus: Battling the Elements for 116 Years [Buster Keaton]

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    Well, not quite 116 years. Buster Keaton would’ve turned 116 today, and his films have been delighting audiences for 94 of those years. One of the three great silent comedians (along with Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd), Keaton’s name doesn’t always strike the immediate recognition among mainsteam audiences that Chaplin’s might, but for me, and for many who have seen his films, Keaton’s particular brand of stone-faced endurance against any and all elements that would seek to do him in – from enemy soldiers to angry fathers to hordes of cops to nature itself – can hardly be beat.

    Keaton was a genius at physical comedy, and though Chaplin practically has a patent on the word “pathos,” Keaton’s stoicism manages to get just as much or more true emotion. You feel for him because he refuses to ask for your empathy. Meanwhile, he was busy working through some of the most incredible stunts ever put on film, which he did all himself. The first “whoa” moment watching a Keaton film is always “whoa, they did this before they had computers and stuff,” and the second is always “whoa, he’s doing this himself without stunt double to fill in.” Chaplin did this too, don’t get me wrong, and I love Chaplin to bits, but I get a sense of real danger with Buster that’s quite exhilarating without ever failing to be funny.

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  • 03 Oct

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    Film on TV: October 3-9

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    The Shining, playing Sunday on IFC

    October is horror month, at least in the United States, so I was expecting an uptick in horror films on TV this month, and I’m not disappointed. TCM kicks things off Monday night with some classic 1920s and 1930s horror, most of them must-sees. Newer horror isn’t totally out, either, as IFC plays Kubrick’s The Shining on Sunday (along with a couple of other Kubrick films on Wednesday). Outside of horror, TCM celebrates Nicholas Ray’s birthday with two of his earlier classics on Tuesday night, and continues their month-long tribute to Buster Keaton on Sunday night with some of his best-loved shorts and features.

    Monday, October 3

    9:00pm – TCM – Frankenstein
    The most recognizable image of Frankenstein’s monster comes from this film, rather a departure from Mary Shelley’s novel, but nonetheless iconic as a film. More a tragedy than a horror film, almost, with Dr. Frankenstein’s god-like experiments yielding a monster whose very simplicity becomes his downfall, and self-righteous townspeople who become monsters themselves. Lots more subtlety and tenderness than you’d expect.
    1931 USA. Director: James Whale. Starring: Colin Clive, Boris Karloff, Mae Clarke.
    Must See

    9:00pm – IFC – The Descent
    There aren’t too many people better at straight-up genre fare with flair than Neil Marshall, and this spelunking adventure gone wrong is a prime example – claustrophobia mounts as our characters are trapped in a cave, but that’s not all they have to deal with down there.
    2005 UK. Director: Neil Marshall. Starring: Shauna macdonald, Natalie Jackson Mendoza, Alex Reid.
    (repeats at 2:00am on the 4th)

    10:15pm – TCM – Freaks
    Or, Tod Browing’s circsploitation film, featuring many actual sideshow performers, which has been banned here and there, on and off, since its initial release in 1932. I actually haven’t seen it myself, though it’s been on my list for some time.
    1932 USA. Director: Tod Browning. Starring: Olga Baclanova, Harry Earles, Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams.

    12:30am (4th) – TCM – Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
    Fredric March won his first Oscar for his role as the meek doctor and his violent alter ego, but honestly, the make-up department deserves most of those accolades. Well-done, posh version of the story.
    1931 USA. Director: Rouben Mamoulian. Starring: Fredric March, Miriam Hopkins.

    3:30am (4th) – TCM – The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
    One of the most notable examples of German Expressionism, its also a highly watchable film about a strange series of murders that may be tied back to a somnambulist controlled by the somewhat sinister Dr. Caligari. The heightened emotions and strikingly off-kilter set designs and high contrast lighting would all be greatly influential on film noir a few decades later.
    1919 Germany. Director: Robert Weine. Starring: Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt, Friedrich Feher.
    Must See

    4:45am (4th) – TCM – Nosferatu
    Made in 1922, this is still one of the greatest vampire movies ever made, and possibly the best version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (names are changed due to rights issues, but it’s Dracula at the core). F.W. Murnau epitomizes German Expressionism here with his use of moody light and shadow, while Max Schreck is the embodiment of the horror of Dracula, back before vampires got all sexy and stuff.
    1922 Germany. Director: F.W. Murnau. Starring: Max Schreck, Gustav von Wangenheim, Greta Schroeder.
    Must See

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 28 Sep

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    Rank ‘Em: Billy Wilder

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    Back when I was a mere baby film buff, Billy Wilder was probably one of the very first directors I learned to know by name and seek out his films (along with Alfred Hitchcock). I can’t really explain that, other than I just happened to introduce myself to Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend, Sabrina, and more within a relatively short period of time when I was also becoming aware of “director” as a concept. In any case, I loved Wilder’s stuff because he could do massively entertaining and witty films in almost any genre – film noir, society comedy, romantic drama, social drama, biopic, absurd comedy, etc. Perhaps the only director of the time as versatile when it comes to genre was Howard Hawks. Meanwhile, Wilder and Preston Sturges were two of the pioneers of the writer-director paradigm, which was pretty rare in studio-era Hollywood. I just watched Billy Wilder’s A Foreign Affair for the first time last night, and that pretty much leaves Stalag 17 as the only major Wilder film I haven’t seen. I should probably wait to do this Rank ‘Em until I’ve seen that one, but whatever. I’m a rebel.

    All of these are written and directed by Wilder, except ones that have denote screenplay only. It would be wrong not to mention Wilder’s two long-term writing partners, Charles Brackett, with whom he worked on nearly every film from 1938 to 1950, and I.A.L. Diamond, who cowrote Wilder’s screenplays from 1957 through most of the rest of his career. Brackett’s departure from the team led to a bit more caustic cynicism in Wilder’s writing (see Ace in the Hole), though it had always been present. I will admit that I saw several of these a long LONG time ago and I’m going on my gut memories of them rather than specifics, so feel free to write angry comments about how wrong I am. There are at least a few perhaps surprisingly low placements.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 26 Sep

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    DVD Triage: Week of Sept 27

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    There’s not too much on the new release front (I mean, I had to put Transformers in there to have a big studio release), but some interesting stuff elsewhere, from silent Expressionism to Buster Keaton to British spy dramas to Beatles satires.

    New Release Picks of the Week

    Transformers: Dark of the Moon
    Slim pickings on the new release front; I guess no one wanted to release their DVDs opposite the robotic juggernaut? About the best I heard of this (from people I trust) is “it wasn’t as bad as all that.” Fair enough.
    2011 USA. Director: Michael Bay. Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Tyrese Gibson.
    Amazon DVD | Amazon Blu-ray | Neflix

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 25 Sep

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    Film on TV: Sept 26 – Oct 2

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    The Constant Nymph.jpg
    The Constant Nymph, playing Wednesday on TCM

    A few new ones this week, notably for classic film buffs, the long-out-of-circulation The Constant Nymph makes its TCM debut, after a very successful screening at this year’s TCM Film Festival. This movie garnered an Oscar nom for Joan Fontaine in 1943, but hasn’t been seen since right issues began plaguing it in the late 1940s. Also check out pre-Code classic Baby Face playing right after it. Plus the first Tracy-Hepburn collaboration, Woman of the Year, plays earlier in the day. Finally, don’t miss the Buster Keaton marathon on Sunday night, starting with The General and moving on into some of the best silent shorts ever made.

    Monday, September 26

    6:00am – MGM – Witness for the Prosecution
    This courtroom drama/thriller is among the last great films for all three of its stars, as Charles Laughton plays the crotchety judge overseeing the murder trial of Tyrone Power, with the major witness in the case being Power’s wife Marlene Dietrich. But not everyone is playing on the level here, and as the trial goes on, loyalties shift and double-crosses are revealed right and left.
    1957 USA. Director: Billy Wilder. Starring: Charles Laughton, Marlene Dietrich, Tyrone Power.

    7:00pm – IFC – Hard Candy
    Ellen Page burst onto the scene as a teenage girl getting involved with an older guy she met on the internet – initially looks like a cautionary tale about internet chat relationships, but goes into even more twisted realms than that, with Ellen owning the screen every second.
    2005 USA. Director: David Slade. Starring: Ellen Page, Patrick Wilson, Sandra Oh.
    (repeats at 3:00am on the 27th)

    8:00pm – Fox Movie – The Panic in Needle Park
    A harrowing tale of NYC heroin addicts, exemplifying the dark side of youth culture that New Hollywood does so well. A star-making turn for Al Pacino, just a year prior to The Godfather.
    1971 USA. Director: Jerry Schatzberg. Starring: Al Pacino, Kitty Winn, Alan Vint.
    (repeats at 10:00pm)

    9:15pm – IFC – American Psycho
    A virtuoso performance from Christian Bale leads this controversial thriller about an affluent Wall Street investment banker leading a double life as a psychopath carrying out his amoral and misanthropic fantasies through sex and murder.
    2000 USA. Director: Mary Herron. Starring: Christian Bale, Justin Theroux, Josh Lucas, Chloe Sevigny, Reese Witherspoon.
    (repeats at 12:30am on the 27th)

    2:00am (27th) – TCM – Shanghai Express
    Marlene Dietrich is Shanghai Lil, a woman of somewhat ill repute traveling up and down on the Shanghai Express, surviving by her “wits” alone – until a former lover shows up and gets captured by Chinese guerrillas. An iconic role for Dietrich, one of several for director Josef von Sternberg.
    1932 USA. Director: Josef von Sternberg. Starring: Marlene Dietrich, Clive Brook, Anna May Wong, Warner Oland, Eugene Pallette.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 23 Sep

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    Guy Maddin Blogathon: Confessions of a Maddin Newbie

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    [Part of The Maddin-est Blogathon in the World! Contest Head over to that link for more Maddin-ness.]

    Nobody can really tell you what watching a Guy Maddin film is like. Or maybe nobody really tried to tell me. My first Maddin experience was Brand Upon the Brain!, and it was less than a year ago. Despite having heard about Maddin from Marina and Kurt for years, I had no idea what I was getting into. Watching a Maddin film is like jumping into another world, and not just in the way that all cinema is a window into another world. Maddin makes films like none I’ve ever seen before, somewhere on the line between narrative and avant-garde, evoking very early cinema but with a soft edge of surrealism that most primitive films only gain through the degradation of nitrate stock, and infusing that very old style with a preoccupation with memory, repression, and sexual anxiety.

    Thinking back now on Brand Upon the Brain! and Careful which I watched soon after is like looking through a mirror filled with murky memories – I remember snatches of Isabella Rossellini’s narration, and matted images harkening back to Maddin’s eponymous character’s childhood. I remember muted colors and highly stylized acting. I remember butler school and a lighthouse. I remember troubling mother issues and ghosts and cats. My memories of the two are not mixed up, because though both use a throwback visual style, they’re very different from each other. But both exist in the hazy nether regions of visual memory rather than as fully-formed narratives. Perhaps that’s appropriate. My memories of Maddin films, even ones I’ve seen within the past several months, approximate Maddin’s own slipstream way of visualizing and editing his films with a dream logic all their own.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 22 Sep

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    Review: Contagion

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    (4/5)

    With no prologue, no set-up, we’re thrust into Day Two. Gwyneth Paltrow is visibly fighting a bug; she’s shaky, she’s sniffly, she’s sweating and shivering at the same time. Not how you want to feel while traveling through a busy airport, but this is more than just a personal discomfort. The next few moments track, via a frenetically-scored montage, the movements of every person she’s come into contact with in the past few hours, and all the things they touch. A martini glass left on a bar, a tiny bathroom shared by dozens of airline passengers, a touch of a hand using a railing to swing out of a bus – these innocuous commonplaces all become harbingers of death, each touch hitting us viscerally.

    From there, the film spreads out like the virus, pulling in the CDC and the World Health Organization to investigate this Minnesota woman’s quick demise and the already world-wide spread of the disease through Hong Kong, London, China, Chicago, and more. Every angle gets its moment (and sometimes it seems like little more than a moment), from Matt Damon’s grieving husband and frightened father to Laurence Fishburne’s seasoned CDC coordinator to Kate Winslet’s professional but deeply sympathetic field agent to Marion Cotillard’s WHO investigator to Jude Law’s conspiracy theorist blogger to Gwyneth Paltrow’s unsuspecting viral carrier to Jennifer Ehle’s brilliant scientist, and more. If these sound like types, that’s because they are. The film has so many stories it wants to tell that each one is perhaps understandably underdeveloped, relying on familiar types and star power to give them power.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 22 Sep

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    MorePop: Music in September

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    September is shaping up to be quite a nice month for music releases, with several big-name indie releases that I’ve been waiting for, as well as some I hadn’t heard of before but kinda like based on hearing them on NPR’s First Listen and Stereogum. There are even more than this, these are just some that are filling up my Spotify lately.

    What are you listening to these days, and what releases are you looking forward to?

    Mates of State – Mountaintops

    Mates of State have been one of my favorite bands for at least three or four albums now (I won’t claim to have been around for their first outings), and so far this one isn’t changing my mind. I haven’t had a chance to fully absorb all of it yet, but the first few songs for sure are winners.

    Amazon | Spotify

    Grouplove – Never Trust a Happy Song

    I remember hearing Grouplove’s single “Colours” a while back when it was on their EP and liking it, but I forgot to follow up with them until a friend reminded me last week that their album was out. And then I spent two straight days listening to it.

    Amazon | Spotify

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 21 Sep

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    DVD Triage: Week of Sep 20

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    Only one major new release this week, but there’s some good classic stuff and a ton of procedural TV shows on DVD this week. Plus a few new Instant Watches, but look out for the month-turnover expirations. There are a bunch of them, including all the Bond films (yes, I know they just got added…grrr), a bunch of Miramax films, and a smattering of Kubrick films.

    New Release Pick of the Week

    Bridesmaids
    I personally avoided Bridesmaids because of its Apatow association, but I was clearly a minority, as the film was embraced by critics and moviegoers alike. Maybe I’ll give it a try one of these days.
    2011 USA. Director: Paul Feig. Starring: Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph.
    Amazon DVD | Amazon Blu-ray | Netflix

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 19 Sep

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    Film on TV: September 19-25

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    Paths of Glory, playing on Tuesday on TCM.

    Some of the new ones this week are very good indeed, from Kubrick’s Paths of Glory (on Tuesday) to Chaplin’s The Circus to Tarkovsky’s Solaris (both late Sunday night), along with a handful of others. Also look out for TCM’s James Dean triple feature on Wednesday – that is, all three of Dean’s films back to back.

    Monday, September 19

    6:35pm – Sundance – Wendy & Lucy
    This is a favorite among Row Three writers, following a young woman on the verge of financial collapse as she’s about to lose a major job opportunity as well as her beloved dog.
    2008 USA. Director: Kelly Reichardt. Starring: Michelle Williams, Will Oldham, Michell Worthey, John Robinson.
    (repeats at 3:35am on the 20th)

    9:45pm – TCM – The Red Shoes
    Almost all of the films Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger made together are incredibly good, but The Red Shoes might just be the best. In the film, a mix of the tale of Svengali and of Hans Christian Anderson’s story about a ballerina who couldn’t remove the red shoes and was doomed to dance to her death, actual ballerina Moira Shearer is the dancer made successful by a jealous ballet impresario, though she loves a poor composer. The centerpiece of the film is a Technicolor extravaganza performance of the titular ballet, still one of the greatest ballet sequences on film.
    1948 UK. Directors: Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger. Starring: Moira Shearer, Marius Goring, Anton Walbrook.
    Must See

    12:15am (20th) – TCM – Invitation to the Dance
    Gene Kelly really pushed the envelope when it came to long-form balletic sequences in movies, including them in On the Town, An American in Paris, and Singin’ in the Rain. With Invitation to the Dance, he carried that to its logical conclusion – a film made up of three stories told entirely in dance. I haven’t seen this myself yet, but I’m very interested to check it out.
    1956 USA. Director: Gene Kelly. Starring: Gene Kelly, Igor Youskevitch, Claire Sombert, Tamara Toumanova.
    Newly Featured!

    » Read the rest of the entry..

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