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Love Has Won (2023)
I really think you had to be there.
I tread very carefully here, knowing that I'm kinda going on a limb, but I have to say, after watching this, I have some serious doubts that Amy Carlson was god.
There I said it.
It's a precarious position, given the credibility and perceptive, critical thinking of these people. Perhaps it was because I sat on a couch munching mad Fritos, watching at a distance, in Cartesian space.
My dog definitely looks at me with disdain, like "human, you are wicked lower vibration."
I mean when it comes to 3-D, I really don't think you get more 3-D than me. I'm not proud.
Hannah Olson lets these modern-day apostles tell their story in their own words, and I really applaud her for letting these folks express their thoughts in their own words, because what I really expected was yet another tedious smear campaign against one of the many gods walking around on the surface of the earth.
This is told as narrative; the documentarian doesn't try to tell us what to think, and I appreciate it.
Anyway, one day I hope to raise my vibrational frequencies to somewhere near where these folks are at so I, too, can experience a true incarnate god or goddess (the latter more likely as the gynocracy continues to consolidate power over this plane).
As for the daddy gods (a lot of gods here), I'd have to see side by side footage of them walking on water, compared with playing hacky sack in a Phish concert parking lot, to really decide what the deal is.
And that business about colloidal silver turning you blue -- I mean, maybe. I've met enough crazed libertarians to know this is possible (always chase it with raw milk, guys).
But could the skin color change on Mom also be indicative that she is reincarnating as Krishna?
No. I just don't buy it. Sorry folks, I'm just deeply downstat these days. It's the colloidal silver. I WANT TO BELIEVE.
The documentary or theological epic (depending on how you take it) is definitely worth a watch.
Your heart will be filled with sympathy and compassion for these folks.
We're All Going to the World's Fair (2021)
Haunting, unsettling, and hits strangely close to home...
A strange film arriving just in time for the crumbling of our consensus reality, We're All Going to the World's Fair is an intense exploration of the liminal spaces between our sense of real-life identity and what we can be, or what we can explore, or what we seek, in virtual environments.
If you took Serial Experiments: Lain, made it with real actors, injected some indie mumblecore aesthetics (albeit without mumbling), and set it in the West, you'd get something close to what we have here.
Casey is an alienated, unhappy teenager who participates in an online horror-themed challenge, and then we observe the way the game seems to change her. We're not sure how much we are seeing is real.
The film's uncanny, dreamlike quality is built not only on an excellent soundtrack but the filmmaker's insistence on taking her time. Oddly compelling camera angles, and multiple cinematic grace notes are used to excellent effect.
One disorienting aspect of the film is we're never sure what genre of film we're watching. On the surface, this is a horror film, but it is much more a commentary on the present human condition (at least of a certain kind of human) than it is something that merely intends to scare you.
Another work which comes to mind is 2006's Linsday the Alchemist, a criminally obscure short film about transmutation, in which we cannot tell if something supernatural is happening, or whether what we're seeing is all in the mind of the character.
More art house than horror, you may find comments which label the film slow or boring. My recommendation is to turn off the lights and all other distractions and let yourself sink into the film, and into the heads of the characters. This film needs to be properly experienced to get the full effect.
This is uncompromised excellence. I wish there were more films like it, but it is not, and I say this a lot in my IMDB reviews, for everyone.
If you're looking for conventional horror, look elsewhere.
I will be thinking of this movie a lot in days to come.
Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made (2018)
Antrum is excellent and I will die on this hill.
While clearly not appreciated by everyone, I found Antrum incredibly effective.
I would start with the pitch-perfect performances of the two protagonists, played by Nicole Tompkins and Rowan Smyth. At times you forget you're watching a movie; you can tell the direction is very deliberate here as the script slithers along in an unorthodox and bizarre way, yet these two actors somehow manage to express exactly what you'd believe real people would at any given moment.
Secondly, the film is disorienting and oppressive. This is accomplished, first of all, by invading a "safe space" from demons, Satan, hell, and the occult: a sunny, almost idyllic forest. Usually, dark forces creep around in gothic mansions or dark forests after midnight, around bonfires.
Not so, here. Instead, the bad stuff happens mainly in broad daylight in an otherwise peaceful, appealing setting. The effect, therefore, is more unsettling because daylight and nice forests are supposed to be the respite between the periods of darkness where evil things rise and run amok in the shadows.
There is no respite here.
Further, the not-quite-subliminal frames inserted into the film really amplify matters, which brings me to the most important point:
If the filmmakers would have asked me my opinion of this, I would have advised them to ditch the concept of a "cursed film" leaving the middle part - the Antrum story itself - to speak for itself. It feels like the filmmakers started out with this idea of a cursed film, perhaps with the film's plot as a secondary concern, but in reality the film itself holds up well and exceeds expectations.
In particular, we're not 100% sure that what we're seeing is really happening, or whether the two characters have unwittingly created an egregore, in which a consensus hallucination of sort is occurring.
Had the filmmakers had a much larger budget, they might have been tempted to use CGI to represent actual supernatural elements, but, in particular, the chains dragging across the forest floor were somehow more horrifying than a full-bore representation of what was supposed to be pulling at those chains.
I might have even advised pulling back further to make this even more subtle. The real tension here is between what is real and what is imagined in the minds of the characters.
The metal baphomet is reminiscent of the wicker man, which I appreciated, and the way the film doesn't feel the need to explain the presence of that or the forest Hungarians who treat it as some kind of totem, is greatly appreciated. Any attempt to tie this film together with a grand explanation would have been far less satisfying.
Something is seriously wrong in this forest.
Lastly, there is the soundtrack, which must be fully heard to be believed. As with the deft editing, I kept wondering how the filmmakers figured out how to combine all of these things the way they did to create a deeply unsettling experience.
I am not sure why this is not rated higher. Viewed in the right state of mind, the film really breaks a lot of conventions.
I like it a whole lot. What starts as a film about tunnelling to hell morphs into folk horror, as the landscape - the sunny forest - becomes a character unto itself.
The Wind of Change (1961)
Don't be a bigot or your life might go all wonky.
This is a movie about racism, and contains a lot of ugly epithets, so fair warning: if you think you've learned enough about this subject to give this nasty little film a miss, you're not missing out on much.
One could be forgiven for assuming that the trajectory of this sort of story is the lead character, a thoroughly unlikable stain of a human being, becomes hip to the consequences of his ugly mind, and attains some kind of enlightenment about bigotry -- or something along these lines.
This is not what happens.
The youth's parents are more progressive than he is, and by far my favorite part of the movie is where the lead character's father, played by Donald Pleasence, punches his son in the face.
The breaking of tension when, finally, this walking subtraction of a human being gets clocked by his mild-mannered, rabbit-raising father, far exceeds any satisfaction one might get at the end of the film. The film kind of drifts after this scene without any real payout at the end.
This is one of those kitchen sink films, with English people Englishing hard. Maybe I'm just sore because I ordinarily like this sort of thing, but the only really likeable characters in this are Pleasence and his daughter. The mother seems redeemable. The main character and his moronic friends (one played by a young, naive-looking David Hemmings) are not.
I think where this misses the mark is the anonymity of the poor victim of all of this. It's not really about him or the fact that he's been senselessly murdered by a bunch of dolts, but, rather, the consequences to the white characters around him, as if the main reason one should not be a bigot is the consequences that the bigot himself might face.
That's what's off about this film. We barely get to know the victim, and that's sad. He's a plot device.
The film looks good; the black-and-white suits it. Pleasence is excellent here as he always is. The rest of the acting is alright, and if you enjoy feeling contempt, you'll like Johnny Briggs's performance here. This is about as unsympathetic a performance as you're likely to find.
You won't learn anything, and I don't believe you'll walk away feeling enriched. The film meant well, but missed the mark.
Return of the Secaucus Seven (1980)
Self-satisfied, privileged Boomers talking about nothing.
What I wanted from a film with a title like this and John Sayles at the helm, was a story about people and their politics, and what I got, was soap.
The movie drops us into the lives of these characters and immediately goes into their relationships and sex lives, in this self-satisfied "like oh my god you guys we are SO in the midst of the sexual revolution; let's talk about 'The Pill.'"
But since Vietnam is over, the political and economic system have apparently become irrelevant.
Some characters haven't decided exactly what to do yet, but you know they're going to go for the money. They're going to go for it because the money is out there, and they have the luxury of drifting through life until they inevitably grab the cash (notable exception: Strathairn, the town grease monkey).
If I lived my life this way, I'd be destitute. I had no choice but to immediately get yoked to the grind. Must be nice to drift around until you're 30 "finding yourself."
What a drag. I finished the movie thinking, "Who cares?"
Sure it's got that indie feel, with characters reciting lines rather than saying them the way a human being would. It's got the interesting New Hampshire location, and I applaud anything that isn't filmed in Los Angeles or New York.
There are occasional references to their apparent radicalism when they were students, but they are these off-handed comments, like "Ha, weren't we so 'of our time?'"
John Sayles would go on to make far more interesting movies with substantially more depth, and if I sound irritable, it is because, early though this film is, I expected more from him. I wanted this film to be better. I wanted it to be about a real existential crisis of some sort, rather than, "oh no we are about to be in our thirties and what does that mean when it comes to settling down and having kids and all." They're not concerned that this will take them off of picket lines or something.
They're just upset their 20s are over and they're about to become - quite literally - thirtysomething.
I'm also irritated at this for the same reason I'm irritated at the film it is always compared to: The Big Chill. Maybe this is the real story of both: financial success, or at least a world in which that was possible and attainable - an "option," makes you into a total bore.
"I will be paying off my student debt until the day I die and my landlord just jacked my rent up 60% and I can't afford food" is the world I live in.
Maybe that's the story, intentional or not.
Maybe that's the point.
And while I have no doubt the intention was not to rub this in the face of future generations, it feels like that. The 80s were coming, and the portfolios were going to grow, and these people were going to age in a completely non-self-aware way into the sorts of people who would later have the nerve to accuse younger people of being lazy or entitled for complaining about how hard it was to keep a roof over their heads or were buried in crushing debt.
I just wish I could bring myself to care about any of these characters. Sayles was too much in love with them already; nothing happens in terms of the narrative that gives the viewer a reason to care.
It's as if we're supposed to just feel affection for them - or, I suspect, recognition of them - out of the gate.
Like I'm not the audience here.
Fine.
Not my rodeo, not my clowns.
This is a film in which nothing happens, but I can handle that (I love Linklater's "Slacker"). The difference here is the conversations are repetitive, tedious, and navel-gazing. I kept waiting for them to get to the good stuff, and they never did.
Who cares who slept with who, here? I don't understand why I'm supposed to care. The characters are so flat and poorly developed, it's like an overheard conversation you tune out because you don't know the people involved.
Still, for all that, it's indie, it's Sayles, it's 1979. Watched it, ticked off the box, but I won't watch it again.
Behemoth (2003)
Remarkably effective given its length...
The director here captures a few moments in some sort of black magic ritual which goes horribly awry.
It is not explained why the ritual is taking place or what the magician was hoping to accomplish.
What we are shown are results which were clearly not what was intended. To this end, the director employs a variety of strange, uncanny, unsettling imagery and music.
I am particularly impressed with how the director destroys time. It is not clear what time period this is taking place in, and that is as true of the ritual on screen as it is of the film itself: It would be difficult to pin down when this film was made.
The director has created a sort of hermetically-sealed vessel in which the action takes place, inspiring both dread and horror.
The excellent soundtrack, similarly, seems to exist outside of linear time.
Fans of occult cinema (e.g., Kenneth Anger's Invocation of My Demon Brother) will enjoy this, as will fans of supernatural horror, but I have to believe the faithful would as well, as this also serves as a fantastical cautionary tale.
Excellent atmospherics. A single, well-executed shot of horror that gets in, does its damage, then ends.
Home Page (1998)
Documentary is well-made, but the characters...
The documentary consists of ongoing interactions with Silicon Valley narcissists and space cadets who are obsessed not only with the possibilities of creating Brand Me (LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!) on the web, counterbalanced by the director's hesitation about the medium.
I found myself in a state of constant agitation watching this.
It seemed like there was an unexplored vast middle ground in which the Web could be a democratizing medium in the positive sense of the word. A little humility, a little balance, choosing one's words carefully, respecting the privacy of others always seemed like common sense to me.
Among others, the documentary follows some guy named Justin Hall, am insufferable chronic over-sharer who compulsively posts details of his personal life online and seems to have been building a career and a reputation on this, although I'd never heard of him until this documentary.
I would have liked to watch Howard Rheingold harangue him for his personality excesses for two hours. Julie Petersen, or whatever her name is now, also needed a good talking to. But then again, I don't think Julie truly believes anyone other than Julie exists.
If nothing else, it was an excellent foreshadowing of what the Web would become when social media began dominating the space a thing a few years later.
The documentary is fair, taken at a point in time when the ramifications of the Web, especially the dark ones, were less clear. At that point, most of the dystopian aspects of the web were more of a theoretical possibility.
I love the web. I'd been online for several years before this documentary came out. But if I hadn't heard of the Internet, there is nothing in this documentary which would encourage me to check it out.
This is not a failure of the filmmaker. The documentary, as a snapshot in Web time, is interesting enough but now that it's over, I'm kind of annoyed, and I have to be at work in a few hours and can't sleep.
This was the zeitgeist in the late 90s, at least in California, brah. Worth a watch. I'd drink before watching it, if I could do it again.
Nomadland (2020)
Like if Ken Loach met Jim Jarmusch
I should say for the record that I loved this movie dearly, in a way that happens perhaps once a decade.
I read the description, saw the always-great Frances McDormand was in it (is there any better actor living today?), and sort of knew this would be a movie I'd like.
McDormand delivers (because of course), and the excellent David Strathairn's here too, and he, like McDormand, is always an actor who will pull me toward a film just because of his involvement with it.
Much must be said of the pitch-perfect performances, Chloé Zhao's gentle, masterful touch, and all of the nomadic storytellers who fill out this rich yet lightly-plotted examination of rootless Americans constitute a film which will hold up well to multiple viewings.
I can watch Frances McDormand walk though landscapes pretty much for hours, and there is much of this. Her character is somewhat guarded at times, but we're watching the wheels turn, wondering about her specific emotional state (which is why, at times, when she does show her cards, it's particularly satisfying and thought-provoking.) We know she's carrying pain, but events in the movie disabuse us of the notion that this is the sum total of who she is. Pain's a part of it, but it's not *just* that.
This is a slow, meditative, quiet movie, the sort of which few are made anymore. I imagine a certain sort of person would be bored. I was rapt.
We follow this itinerant character, Fern, around the American West, as she lives out of her van, meeting other nomads in similar circumstances. Her husband has passed away and her time on the road has actually changed her such that she has problems sleeping in standard buildings anymore.
We hear people's stories. We watch them take jobs to earn some scratch. We look at deserts, abandoned homes, and rivers.
At first, I thought the movie would simply focus on her spiritual damage. Well, loss like that damages us all, but reading the story as just that cheats her of her personal agency and strong will: she has opportunities to get off of the road and chooses not to. She owns her own life and she asserts her right to it, like she does to her cigarettes.
At times I was reminded of movies like Easy Rider, Two Lane Blacktop, Vanishing Point, and even Paterson. This is a road film par excellence and as a fan of road films for decades (I collect them), I cannot recommend this highly enough.
It may be a generation before we see another like this.
Strongly and enthusiastically recommended.