There were parts that made me sad, obviously, because it's about Nazis, but the parts that made me tear up were the life-affirming bits that made me think that things were going to be OK and that the world still has good in it
I picked it up because Waititi was directing and I'd heard it was a dark comedy, so I was thinking more like We Live in the Shadows. I thought I had a grip on the "dark" and the "comedy" parts and then hooooooly fuck it dropped a thermonuclear gutpunch right in the middle of one of those life-affirming bits. That movie went from comedy to "destroy you" faster than pretty much anything else I've ever seen, then somehow pulls it back to positive in the end instead of leaving you a wreck.
I was not ready for that movie when I watched it, but it's so good.
I watched it solely because I heard "Taika Waititi as Hitler". I didn't even watch the trailer before hand. Think that helped me be surprised where the story went before it punched me in the gut. Like "middle-aged man in the theater on the verge of ugly crying" kinda thing.
Purchased Onward as a Saturday activity for the family in quarantine. The start of the movie is pretty slow and i'm not sure how much of it is necessary for the setup. The movie picks up fairly well about 20 minutes in and then clips along as has great laughs and tears. Definitely worth the price as seeing it in the theater would have cost more.
I just saw The Big Sick. It was excellent and very funny and boy the scenes about getting real sick and being on a ventilator sure make you perk up right now.
I just saw The Big Sick. It was excellent and very funny and boy the scenes about getting real sick and being on a ventilator sure make you perk up right now.
I love that movie to death.
I am in the business of saving lives.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
I just saw The Big Sick. It was excellent and very funny and boy the scenes about getting real sick and being on a ventilator sure make you perk up right now.
We watched Invisible Man today. It was really good! There's a bit near the end that didn't make a lot of sense to me, though...
After the brother is dead, the guy from Leverage is all, "So your super-abusive, villanous ex is okay now! And 'some people saw some weird stuff'!" Because he didn't personally get the shit beat out of him by an invisible man? And he wasn't previously sheltering her after she escaped the ex?
It seemed really weird. Like he'd forgotten everything that'd happened in the movie up to that point.
Then we watched Guns Akimbo, which was ridiculous and fun and I recommend it to anyone. It's like Scott Pilgrim and Crank had a baby and it had Daniel Radcliffe's face.
I watched Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) today...whole title because fuck the haters I love it...and all I can say about that movie is I want more. I'm quietly hopeful that being a rapid-to-streaming release during the plague might actually give this movie a second chance.
I liked the first Creed a lot, but Creed II didn't do anything for me. There are some potentially interesting aspects there, but they're entirely underdeveloped or downright ignored in favour of the predictable and trite. Worse, they managed to dampen the considerable charisma of both Michael B. Jordan and Thessa Thompson, while Stallone gets little less to say than some regurgitated motivational posters. The most interesting thing about the film was when about ten minutes into it the sound went on the fritz and we thought at first that it was a stylistic choice because the Thessa Thompson character has a progressive hearing disorder, but that was just the start of the system crashing on us. Once we'd restarted everything, the film went back to normal and boring. So, to anyone who liked Creed in spite of not caring at all about boxing: you may want to give Creed II a miss. It didn't just go from good to okay, it went from good to utterly forgettable.
Thirith on
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
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BlackDragon480Bluster KerfuffleMaster of Windy ImportRegistered Userregular
I watched Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) today...whole title because fuck the haters I love it...and all I can say about that movie is I want more. I'm quietly hopeful that being a rapid-to-streaming release during the plague might actually give this movie a second chance.
Agreed, I know I'm going to watch it as soon as it goes live Monday night in UHD streaming. I want the HDR to work so well I can taste the egg sandwich.
No matter where you go...there you are. ~ Buckaroo Banzai
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AbsoluteZeroThe new film by Quentin KoopantinoRegistered Userregular
It was fun to see Dolph Lundgren reprise an old guy version of Ivan Drago and get to learn a bit more of his story but yeah... Creed II was not great. It's a shame because Creed was pretty good and the concept for Creed II had potential and tickled the nostalgia center of my brain.
It was fun to see Dolph Lundgren reprise an old guy version of Ivan Drago and get to learn a bit more of his story but yeah... Creed II was not great. It's a shame because Creed was pretty good and the concept for Creed II had potential and tickled the nostalgia center of my brain.
I had a similar thing as with Forrest Gump, in that I kept wishing that the film was about these other people and not the ones the film is actually about. The relationship between Drago Sr and Drago Jr had so much more dramatic potential than what we got with Adonis, his girlfriend and Rocky.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
It was fun to see Dolph Lundgren reprise an old guy version of Ivan Drago and get to learn a bit more of his story but yeah... Creed II was not great. It's a shame because Creed was pretty good and the concept for Creed II had potential and tickled the nostalgia center of my brain.
I had a similar thing as with Forrest Gump, in that I kept wishing that the film was about these other people and not the ones the film is actually about. The relationship between Drago Sr and Drago Jr had so much more dramatic potential than what we got with Adonis, his girlfriend and Rocky.
The climax bothered me most.
In Rocky 4, Apollo Creed's pride gets him killed when he makes Rocky promise not to throw in the towel no matter what. In Creed 2, an older, humbled Rocky still doesn't throw in the towel and encourages Baby Creed to keep fighting with cracked ribs and Baby Creed still wins. The moral of the story is Baby Creed is supposed to be better than the father he never knew! He made the same mistake and somehow won!
I watched Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) today...whole title because fuck the haters I love it...and all I can say about that movie is I want more. I'm quietly hopeful that being a rapid-to-streaming release during the plague might actually give this movie a second chance.
It's so good and dumb it is fantastic.
The new Harley Quinn series kinda almost counts as more. It's kinda BoP(atFEoOHQ) meets the Tick.
So lately I've watched a good deal of early films by Japanese director Koji Wakamatsu. I had previously seen a couple of his later works: United Red Army (which is a masterpiece) and Caterpillar (which is fascinating). His direct and deeply uncomfortable reckonings with Japanese history and unique aesthetic approaches were really impressive for an older artist, and they made me curious about his earlier work.
The thing is, Wakamatsu is one of the most important pinku eiga or 'pink film' directors. Pink film is ostensibly Japanese softcore exploitation that became popular in the 60's, and actually won over a sizeable portion of the Japanese moviegoing public. My limited experience with pink film has found them to be pretty artistically compelling, but also pretty deranged: violent, indulgent, misogynistic films that leave one wondering who exactly they're for---if they're made in earnest at all. They also often have intimidating and baffling titles, like 'Office Lady Rape: Devouring the Giant Tits', for example.
It's very difficult to talk about how much I enjoyed Wakamatsu's work from anything other than a defensive position. Here's what I'll say: Wakamatsu's films are difficult, violent, uncomfortable films that often use their exploitative elements for commentative effect. They are starkly beautiful, political, personal works of avant-garde art that outshine a great deal of exploitation I've seen from any other director. They are made cheaply and quickly, and yet exude more imagination, artistry, and efficiency than most films that are privileged with exponentially more time and money. Almost every film I watched speaks to political and social dissatisfaction erupting in ugly ways. Nearly every one I watched features sexual violence. Some were comprised of almost nothing but it.
I watched 12 of his films released between 1965 and 1969. Wakamatsu was extremely prolific, averaging over seven films per year in this time. Spoilered are my brief thoughts on each one:
I started with Secrets Behind the Wall, which set the tone for his work really well. It's a prickly, austere film about modern dissatisfaction set in a modernist apartment block. A middle-aged woman conducts an affair with a man scarred by the bomb, and a young man across the block who is frustrated by his continuous academic failures, grows deranged. For being set in small apartments, and dealing with fairly ugly subject matter, it's really beautifully shot and edited. It gets disturbing in the end, but it strikes me as a polemic about social isolation, and a modern state of living that robs people of direction and turns them against one another. Very good.
Next I watched The Embryo Hunts in Secret, which is even more stylish, more scandalous, and I think more imminently watchable. A boss kidnaps a female employee who resembles his wife who left him and then tortures her in his apartment. That's the whole movie, and it might be worth studying for how it makes this plot interesting and watchable. The film is set to classical music with experimental cinematography that moves like a dream, making the whole thing strange and confrontational in ways that feel pretty rare for most exploitation. It's also a lot kinkier than it is sadistic, with the major form of torture being bondage and whipping. Ultimately a pretty corrosive yet aesthetically fascinating portrait of misogyny.
Vagabond of Sex is lighter than the first two: the story of a Japanese salaryman who abandons his life and unhappy marriage in Tokyo for a sex-driven road trip through coastal Japan. Like the first two it's got that avant-garde vibe with voiceover and nudity and nice black and white photography, but I didn't feel like it was doing anything that interesting with its environment or plotline. It's driven by similar theming about growing depravity in a repressed and unhappy culture, but it feels spread thin between encounters, not nearly psychological enough to lend urgency or importance to its events. It does, however, pull an incredible coup at the end, where the protagonist comes home to realize he and his wife are the subject of Shohei Imamura's landmark documentary A Man Vanishes, and that punchline actually made me appreciate the film a lot more.
Next came Violated Angels, which is a mean, mean movie. Loosely based on the Richard Speck murders, it's about a deranged misogynist who breaks into a nurse's boarding house and systematically assaults and murders them. Unlike Embryo, there's no camp flavouring, there's even less psychological insight, and there's hardly any social dimension. As ugly as it is, it's very rigorous on an aesthetic level with tight editing and efficient and stylish cinematography. The opening and closing segments are especially catching with their collage-like editing and more compelling thematic range, but the experience on a whole is so bleak and its proposed meanings aren't strong enough to spin its cruelty into anything thought provoking.
Another real bleak one followed with Vengeance Demon, which is about an outcast brother and sister in a small village who are targeted by the rest of the villagers for their land. The brother is hanged and left for dead and the sister is raped; the brother wakes up, gets a sword, and sets out to murder the entire village. He murders not just the rapists, but everyone, and ostensibly no one fights back---they cry and ask to be spared. Wakamatsu's point here seems to be that it's better for a guilty society to be razed than to work through more morally fair means. It's harsh, but it made me think about the structure and allure of revenge narratives, how violence begetting violence is frequently a means for an audience to enjoy bloodletting from a morally safe position ('it's deserved!'). It made me wish there were more as direct and upsetting as this; there would be fewer overall as a result.
Naked Bullet is Wakamatsu's take on a yakuza picture: brisk and plot-focused, but with his unique, lurid visual style. Peculiarities like mixing black and white and colour film, psychological editing, unconventional construction, and a scene in which the criminals devour whole, head-and-feet-still-on roast chickens (one eats a bowl of parsley instead; vegetarian I presume) make it a fun watch, but it doesn't seem like it's commenting on a whole lot. There's a compelling scene earlier on where the honour of the yakuza is exposed as dishonest and cruel, but it's mostly a low-budget MacGuffin-led crime film with a little more skin and than usual. It may actually be a decent starting point for someone who doesn't know Wakamatsu, but is familiar with yakuza films from the period; it gives you some of his flavour in a recognizable package.
Season of Terror is probably the least disturbing film that I watched. Like the first two, it's set almost entirely in a modernist apartment block, this time about a former leftist radical's apartment being bugged by police officers on a stakeout. What happens? Well the radical's got two girlfriends, so they have sex and the police listen. The threesomes are not very exciting visually, the police are very bored, and its setup of sex and radical politics and voyeurism and living in a police state is almost turned against itself---into a monotonous reality of inaction. Duration is the film's primary formal strategy, which is a bit ahead of its time honestly. Running less than 80 minutes with an ironic and formally exuberant final passage, I wish it was a little more unified, but I still enjoyed it quite a bit.
Violence Without a Cause is great. It's awful, but it's brilliant. I don't know if I've seen a better, more suitably despicable film about modern, isolated, angry young men as this one---and it was made in 1969. It's about three nihilistic college dropouts who are driven by their hatred of women and society. They're rapists; they have no life or guidance. Their actions are dictated by their anger and libido, their only escapes from boredom, and the film lays bare their emotional and mental states: how they blame society and encourage the worst behavior and ideas in one another. Unsurprisingly these men do not amount to much, their lives ending in senseless violence directed at themselves and others. It doesn't have the same avant-garde abstraction of some his other films, but this cold and provocative approach has a stark, disturbing beauty, and the ending is a stunner.
The Notorious Concubines is definitely the worst film I've seen from Wakamatsu. It's so clearly outside of his comfort zone and usual production process: a sleazy, high-colour period piece set in medieval China. The version of the film I saw was a dubbed cut for American audiences, probably meant to fit in with Cantonese exploitation of the time. It's got nudity and people getting cut, but the story is confused and it's nowhere near as grimy or affecting as Wakamatsu's usual mode. It's a pretty anonymous film from Wakamatsu, even with all the nudity and violence---clearly a for hire job.
Violent Virgin probably isn't his most abstract film, but it's probably his most surreal. Like Naked Bullet, this one is a yakuza picture that appears to open with a gang member and his girlfriend being punished by their own gang, but it instead falls into surreal logical: an overlapping set of symbols out in dried up Japanese marshland. The female lead is stuck on a crucifix topless, the male lead is made 'boss' as part of his punishment, the actual boss spectates from afar by binoculars and a sniper rifle, characters are killed with baseball bats, the male lead has a tail... or maybe not? I liked its Buñuelian flow, but its loose plot logic and sometimes silly tone kept its violence and circumstances from feeling very impactful, and its singular location kept it a little too hemmed in. It's not bad, but I felt it could have gone further.
Running in Madness, Dying in Love is another great one, and what a title too. It's about a radical leftist who runs away with his sister in-law after they kill his police officer brother during an argument. They head to snowy Hokkaido and begin sleeping with each other, but whenever they check the newspaper the brother's murder isn't yet reported. The woman is really key to this one; her guilt, pain, and need of comfort are the emotional focus of the film: how the living brother exploits these feelings (which are both caused by and reflective of a culturally rigid and punishing Japanese society) is what makes the film intellectually and morally disturbing. With gorgeous photography and location work, and a rich and enigmatic character dynamic, it's probably the most beautifully conceived film of the bunch.
Go Go Second Time Virgin is the most famous of Wakamatsu's 60's work, so I saved it for last. It's a very rough and provocative film. It's about a woman who is gang-raped on a rooftop, and then strikes up an odd friendship with a disturbed man. The entire film is set in this apartment building (mostly its rooftop), and the entire language of its drama is sex and violence. These two talk about killing themselves and one another, and yet seem so removed from their bodies and experiences, acting out or becoming emotional in irrational ways. Other characters exist in barbaric mobs looking to exploit our lead characters, and without giving too much away, they get theirs. Riffing on lovers suicide narratives, urban isolation, generational angst, the Manson murders, and probably more I'm not picking up; it's a difficult film to process. Not sure what else to say about it, so I'll end with some poetry, recited by our female lead, naked on the ground, surrounded by a group of characters who are about to face bloody death:
"Go, go, second-time virgin, riding in your hand like a yellow dream, towards the virgin spring, to stash dead birds below a window, like the ultimate thief."
Spoilered further are some images from a few of his films:
If nothing else, the Harley Quinn series' version of Poison Ivy is just wonderful
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Bennie Blanc travels the world, solving mysteries, using a different accent in each location to make himself seem less threatening
[Muffled sounds of gorilla violence]
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SixCaches Tweets in the mainframe cyberhexRegistered Userregular
A Discord group I’m in had a group watch of The Raid last night and I found it incredible. I’ve never gotten into martial arts movies beyond stuff like Crouching Tiger that crossed over, and now I wonder what else I’m missing out on. For anyone (like me) who hadn’t seen it and doesn’t know much, it’s an Indonesian movie directed by Welshman Gareth Evans about a police raid on a residential tower controlled by a drug lord. The geography and initial setup are really reminiscent of Dredd in the best way, and I’m probably using the most cliche pun ever when I say the movie doesn’t pull any punches.
It’s tightly-written, very well filmed, stressful and intense with enough room at times to breathe, and feels in the best way like something that every time you’ll watch you’ll see something new.
There’s a sequel that’s supposed to also be good but fairly different?
can you feel the struggle within?
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
A Discord group I’m in had a group watch of The Raid last night and I found it incredible. I’ve never gotten into martial arts movies beyond stuff like Crouching Tiger that crossed over, and now I wonder what else I’m missing out on. For anyone (like me) who hadn’t seen it and doesn’t know much, it’s an Indonesian movie directed by Welshman Gareth Evans about a police raid on a residential tower controlled by a drug lord. The geography and initial setup are really reminiscent of Dredd in the best way, and I’m probably using the most cliche pun ever when I say the movie doesn’t pull any punches.
It’s tightly-written, very well filmed, stressful and intense with enough room at times to breathe, and feels in the best way like something that every time you’ll watch you’ll see something new.
There’s a sequel that’s supposed to also be good but fairly different?
The sequel is needlessly convoluted with contrived excuses for amazing fights. Stick with the first.
I mean, these also came here, but Iron Monkey is one of my all-time favorite martial arts films. Ong Bak is great too. I can’t speak to the sequels at all, but the first movie of both series are great.
There is a bunch of shaw brothers stuff on netflix (or amazon i forget which) as well as some gordon liu stuff from outside shaw bros that might be worth checking out. But its hard to say as its very dated and kind of worth looking at as a lens to the era. Chans first drunken master is the superior film. And all of his movies are good but the later ones are less “martial arts” and more general action/stunt movies.
IP man is the best Donnie Yen movie.
The hong kong gangster movies(like IA) are in a similar vein but far more on the action side. Action movies and not martial arts. Only Chan was doing anything like martial arts films out of hong kong at the time.
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Johnny ChopsockyScootaloo! We have to cook!Grillin' HaysenburgersRegistered Userregular
A Discord group I’m in had a group watch of The Raid last night and I found it incredible. I’ve never gotten into martial arts movies beyond stuff like Crouching Tiger that crossed over, and now I wonder what else I’m missing out on. For anyone (like me) who hadn’t seen it and doesn’t know much, it’s an Indonesian movie directed by Welshman Gareth Evans about a police raid on a residential tower controlled by a drug lord. The geography and initial setup are really reminiscent of Dredd in the best way, and I’m probably using the most cliche pun ever when I say the movie doesn’t pull any punches.
It’s tightly-written, very well filmed, stressful and intense with enough room at times to breathe, and feels in the best way like something that every time you’ll watch you’ll see something new.
There’s a sequel that’s supposed to also be good but fairly different?
The Raid 2 is a gangster epic with well-acted and well-shot story scenes as the glue for Even Better Fight Scenes than the first, including a couple that I would happily declare to be 'all-timers'.
Yeah, the first Raid is definitely tighter but I still love the second just as much. I can see people finding the story a little cliched and drawn out maybe but I still find it well done and acted and the fight scenes are well worth it. Definitely all time great action.
A Discord group I’m in had a group watch of The Raid last night and I found it incredible. I’ve never gotten into martial arts movies beyond stuff like Crouching Tiger that crossed over, and now I wonder what else I’m missing out on. For anyone (like me) who hadn’t seen it and doesn’t know much, it’s an Indonesian movie directed by Welshman Gareth Evans about a police raid on a residential tower controlled by a drug lord. The geography and initial setup are really reminiscent of Dredd in the best way, and I’m probably using the most cliche pun ever when I say the movie doesn’t pull any punches.
It’s tightly-written, very well filmed, stressful and intense with enough room at times to breathe, and feels in the best way like something that every time you’ll watch you’ll see something new.
There’s a sequel that’s supposed to also be good but fairly different?
The sequel is good, some people like it more than others. Its worth a watch.
Ever see Kung Fu Hustle? It relies heavily on effects, but that movie has styyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyle.
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
A Discord group I’m in had a group watch of The Raid last night and I found it incredible. I’ve never gotten into martial arts movies beyond stuff like Crouching Tiger that crossed over, and now I wonder what else I’m missing out on. For anyone (like me) who hadn’t seen it and doesn’t know much, it’s an Indonesian movie directed by Welshman Gareth Evans about a police raid on a residential tower controlled by a drug lord. The geography and initial setup are really reminiscent of Dredd in the best way, and I’m probably using the most cliche pun ever when I say the movie doesn’t pull any punches.
It’s tightly-written, very well filmed, stressful and intense with enough room at times to breathe, and feels in the best way like something that every time you’ll watch you’ll see something new.
There’s a sequel that’s supposed to also be good but fairly different?
The sequel is good, some people like it more than others. Its worth a watch.
Ever see Kung Fu Hustle? It relies heavily on effects, but that movie has styyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyle.
COVID-19 cancelled SXSW and left filmmakers out to dry—until a small drive-in stepped in.
Maybe it's time for a drive-in revival
There was a drive-in near where I used to live in Salt Lake. Only went there a few times, but it's definitely a fun experience.
We've got one here and I usually go a couple times per summer. Double feature for like $8 ain't too shabby. Sometimes they have really good double feature lineups, too (Shazam + Endgame was probably the best I can remember, followed by Zootopia + Force Awakens). Seeing a Star Wars movie under a starlit sky was fantastic.
Just over halfway through my 1953 list, so I thought I'd make another post about the best of the big award winners of that year. I'm looking at the winners of the Best Picture Oscar, the Palme d'Or from the Cannes Film Festival, the Golden Lion from the Venice Film Festival, and the Golden Bear from the Berlin Film Festival. Here are the winners from 1953:
Oscar: From Here to Eternity
Palme: The Wages of Fear
Lion: N/A - not awarded despite a great lineup
Bear: also The Wages of Fear
So it's only two movies this year. Interesting that The Wages of Fear won the top prize at two of the biggest festivals. I don't think that's happened since, as festivals usually secure world premieres for their competition slates. Of course this doesn't keep them from winning big at the Oscars---that happened just last year when Parasite won both the Palme and Best Picture. Anyways, thoughts on the two films:
From Here to Eternity is good, as far as a recent-ish take on something as consequential as the Pearl Harbor attack. What makes it interesting is its focus on character first. The majority of the film is about the social lives of stationed military before war was a for sure thing, and the film is upheld by a number of fine performances, the standouts being a career best Frank Sinatra, the always great Deborah Kerr, and Burt Lancaster, who exhibits a sensitivity that broke him out of his streak of playing roughnecks and rogues. It is a good film. It's hard to give it more than that. It isn't iconic apart from its making-out-in-the-surf sequence (which I doubt many people could actually attribute to this film), and it doesn't leave much of a lasting impression with its political ambivalence and Zinnemann's capable but unspectacular visual direction.
The Wages of Fear is something a little more special. For one, it has an extremely novel concept: desperate expats in South America who take a job trucking nitroglycerine through a dangerous mountain road. Director Henri-Georges Clouzot builds a sweaty, cruel atmosphere and has a lot of fun creating a set of increasingly hellish setpieces. Backing the truck onto a rickety platform, or using the cargo to blow through a boulder blocking the road are masterfully mounted sequences of visual tension. Its a hallmark existential thriller, but one that is perhaps a little too nihilistic for its own good, with its dreary start and brashly ironic ending. Still, the meat of the film, the journey itself, makes it necessary viewing.
So The Wages of Fear is my pick. I guess Berlin and Cannes both get a point!
I haven't seen Wages of Fear, but I've seen Sorcerer (which is based on it) and that was fantastic. If you liked Wages of Fear and want more, I'd check it out.
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I watched it solely because I heard "Taika Waititi as Hitler". I didn't even watch the trailer before hand. Think that helped me be surprised where the story went before it punched me in the gut. Like "middle-aged man in the theater on the verge of ugly crying" kinda thing.
It's a real good movie.
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I love that movie to death.
That sounds like what Bogart is saying, yes.
Damn, that last half of the movie, huh
and the gengars who are guiding me" -- W.S. Merwin
It seemed really weird. Like he'd forgotten everything that'd happened in the movie up to that point.
Then we watched Guns Akimbo, which was ridiculous and fun and I recommend it to anyone. It's like Scott Pilgrim and Crank had a baby and it had Daniel Radcliffe's face.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Agreed, I know I'm going to watch it as soon as it goes live Monday night in UHD streaming. I want the HDR to work so well I can taste the egg sandwich.
~ Buckaroo Banzai
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
The climax bothered me most.
It's so good and dumb it is fantastic.
The new Harley Quinn series kinda almost counts as more. It's kinda BoP(atFEoOHQ) meets the Tick.
The thing is, Wakamatsu is one of the most important pinku eiga or 'pink film' directors. Pink film is ostensibly Japanese softcore exploitation that became popular in the 60's, and actually won over a sizeable portion of the Japanese moviegoing public. My limited experience with pink film has found them to be pretty artistically compelling, but also pretty deranged: violent, indulgent, misogynistic films that leave one wondering who exactly they're for---if they're made in earnest at all. They also often have intimidating and baffling titles, like 'Office Lady Rape: Devouring the Giant Tits', for example.
It's very difficult to talk about how much I enjoyed Wakamatsu's work from anything other than a defensive position. Here's what I'll say: Wakamatsu's films are difficult, violent, uncomfortable films that often use their exploitative elements for commentative effect. They are starkly beautiful, political, personal works of avant-garde art that outshine a great deal of exploitation I've seen from any other director. They are made cheaply and quickly, and yet exude more imagination, artistry, and efficiency than most films that are privileged with exponentially more time and money. Almost every film I watched speaks to political and social dissatisfaction erupting in ugly ways. Nearly every one I watched features sexual violence. Some were comprised of almost nothing but it.
I watched 12 of his films released between 1965 and 1969. Wakamatsu was extremely prolific, averaging over seven films per year in this time. Spoilered are my brief thoughts on each one:
Next I watched The Embryo Hunts in Secret, which is even more stylish, more scandalous, and I think more imminently watchable. A boss kidnaps a female employee who resembles his wife who left him and then tortures her in his apartment. That's the whole movie, and it might be worth studying for how it makes this plot interesting and watchable. The film is set to classical music with experimental cinematography that moves like a dream, making the whole thing strange and confrontational in ways that feel pretty rare for most exploitation. It's also a lot kinkier than it is sadistic, with the major form of torture being bondage and whipping. Ultimately a pretty corrosive yet aesthetically fascinating portrait of misogyny.
Vagabond of Sex is lighter than the first two: the story of a Japanese salaryman who abandons his life and unhappy marriage in Tokyo for a sex-driven road trip through coastal Japan. Like the first two it's got that avant-garde vibe with voiceover and nudity and nice black and white photography, but I didn't feel like it was doing anything that interesting with its environment or plotline. It's driven by similar theming about growing depravity in a repressed and unhappy culture, but it feels spread thin between encounters, not nearly psychological enough to lend urgency or importance to its events. It does, however, pull an incredible coup at the end, where the protagonist comes home to realize he and his wife are the subject of Shohei Imamura's landmark documentary A Man Vanishes, and that punchline actually made me appreciate the film a lot more.
Next came Violated Angels, which is a mean, mean movie. Loosely based on the Richard Speck murders, it's about a deranged misogynist who breaks into a nurse's boarding house and systematically assaults and murders them. Unlike Embryo, there's no camp flavouring, there's even less psychological insight, and there's hardly any social dimension. As ugly as it is, it's very rigorous on an aesthetic level with tight editing and efficient and stylish cinematography. The opening and closing segments are especially catching with their collage-like editing and more compelling thematic range, but the experience on a whole is so bleak and its proposed meanings aren't strong enough to spin its cruelty into anything thought provoking.
Another real bleak one followed with Vengeance Demon, which is about an outcast brother and sister in a small village who are targeted by the rest of the villagers for their land. The brother is hanged and left for dead and the sister is raped; the brother wakes up, gets a sword, and sets out to murder the entire village. He murders not just the rapists, but everyone, and ostensibly no one fights back---they cry and ask to be spared. Wakamatsu's point here seems to be that it's better for a guilty society to be razed than to work through more morally fair means. It's harsh, but it made me think about the structure and allure of revenge narratives, how violence begetting violence is frequently a means for an audience to enjoy bloodletting from a morally safe position ('it's deserved!'). It made me wish there were more as direct and upsetting as this; there would be fewer overall as a result.
Naked Bullet is Wakamatsu's take on a yakuza picture: brisk and plot-focused, but with his unique, lurid visual style. Peculiarities like mixing black and white and colour film, psychological editing, unconventional construction, and a scene in which the criminals devour whole, head-and-feet-still-on roast chickens (one eats a bowl of parsley instead; vegetarian I presume) make it a fun watch, but it doesn't seem like it's commenting on a whole lot. There's a compelling scene earlier on where the honour of the yakuza is exposed as dishonest and cruel, but it's mostly a low-budget MacGuffin-led crime film with a little more skin and than usual. It may actually be a decent starting point for someone who doesn't know Wakamatsu, but is familiar with yakuza films from the period; it gives you some of his flavour in a recognizable package.
Season of Terror is probably the least disturbing film that I watched. Like the first two, it's set almost entirely in a modernist apartment block, this time about a former leftist radical's apartment being bugged by police officers on a stakeout. What happens? Well the radical's got two girlfriends, so they have sex and the police listen. The threesomes are not very exciting visually, the police are very bored, and its setup of sex and radical politics and voyeurism and living in a police state is almost turned against itself---into a monotonous reality of inaction. Duration is the film's primary formal strategy, which is a bit ahead of its time honestly. Running less than 80 minutes with an ironic and formally exuberant final passage, I wish it was a little more unified, but I still enjoyed it quite a bit.
Violence Without a Cause is great. It's awful, but it's brilliant. I don't know if I've seen a better, more suitably despicable film about modern, isolated, angry young men as this one---and it was made in 1969. It's about three nihilistic college dropouts who are driven by their hatred of women and society. They're rapists; they have no life or guidance. Their actions are dictated by their anger and libido, their only escapes from boredom, and the film lays bare their emotional and mental states: how they blame society and encourage the worst behavior and ideas in one another. Unsurprisingly these men do not amount to much, their lives ending in senseless violence directed at themselves and others. It doesn't have the same avant-garde abstraction of some his other films, but this cold and provocative approach has a stark, disturbing beauty, and the ending is a stunner.
The Notorious Concubines is definitely the worst film I've seen from Wakamatsu. It's so clearly outside of his comfort zone and usual production process: a sleazy, high-colour period piece set in medieval China. The version of the film I saw was a dubbed cut for American audiences, probably meant to fit in with Cantonese exploitation of the time. It's got nudity and people getting cut, but the story is confused and it's nowhere near as grimy or affecting as Wakamatsu's usual mode. It's a pretty anonymous film from Wakamatsu, even with all the nudity and violence---clearly a for hire job.
Violent Virgin probably isn't his most abstract film, but it's probably his most surreal. Like Naked Bullet, this one is a yakuza picture that appears to open with a gang member and his girlfriend being punished by their own gang, but it instead falls into surreal logical: an overlapping set of symbols out in dried up Japanese marshland. The female lead is stuck on a crucifix topless, the male lead is made 'boss' as part of his punishment, the actual boss spectates from afar by binoculars and a sniper rifle, characters are killed with baseball bats, the male lead has a tail... or maybe not? I liked its Buñuelian flow, but its loose plot logic and sometimes silly tone kept its violence and circumstances from feeling very impactful, and its singular location kept it a little too hemmed in. It's not bad, but I felt it could have gone further.
Running in Madness, Dying in Love is another great one, and what a title too. It's about a radical leftist who runs away with his sister in-law after they kill his police officer brother during an argument. They head to snowy Hokkaido and begin sleeping with each other, but whenever they check the newspaper the brother's murder isn't yet reported. The woman is really key to this one; her guilt, pain, and need of comfort are the emotional focus of the film: how the living brother exploits these feelings (which are both caused by and reflective of a culturally rigid and punishing Japanese society) is what makes the film intellectually and morally disturbing. With gorgeous photography and location work, and a rich and enigmatic character dynamic, it's probably the most beautifully conceived film of the bunch.
Go Go Second Time Virgin is the most famous of Wakamatsu's 60's work, so I saved it for last. It's a very rough and provocative film. It's about a woman who is gang-raped on a rooftop, and then strikes up an odd friendship with a disturbed man. The entire film is set in this apartment building (mostly its rooftop), and the entire language of its drama is sex and violence. These two talk about killing themselves and one another, and yet seem so removed from their bodies and experiences, acting out or becoming emotional in irrational ways. Other characters exist in barbaric mobs looking to exploit our lead characters, and without giving too much away, they get theirs. Riffing on lovers suicide narratives, urban isolation, generational angst, the Manson murders, and probably more I'm not picking up; it's a difficult film to process. Not sure what else to say about it, so I'll end with some poetry, recited by our female lead, naked on the ground, surrounded by a group of characters who are about to face bloody death:
"Go, go, second-time virgin, riding in your hand like a yellow dream, towards the virgin spring, to stash dead birds below a window, like the ultimate thief."
Spoilered further are some images from a few of his films:
Edit: give me the Bennie Blanc series with a different accent in each installment. He can be the American Poirot.
Edit 2: that joke might have been something I read in this thread when the movie first came out. If so I'm terribly sorry for stealing it
It’s tightly-written, very well filmed, stressful and intense with enough room at times to breathe, and feels in the best way like something that every time you’ll watch you’ll see something new.
There’s a sequel that’s supposed to also be good but fairly different?
The sequel is needlessly convoluted with contrived excuses for amazing fights. Stick with the first.
Also Jackie Chan’s Legend of the Drunken Master.
Also also, Returner is a Japanese action-y sci-fi film that is awesome.
That has nothing to do with your post @Six but I love plugging those films.
I need to rewatch Returner, actually.
The 2nd raid is a much bigger film that at time’s felt like a bit of a slog to get through although it does have some fantastic fights in.
I’ve just looked up the times; I’m surprised the raid is 2 hours long while the raid 2 certainly did feel 2.5 hours.
IP man is the best Donnie Yen movie.
The hong kong gangster movies(like IA) are in a similar vein but far more on the action side. Action movies and not martial arts. Only Chan was doing anything like martial arts films out of hong kong at the time.
The Raid 2 is a gangster epic with well-acted and well-shot story scenes as the glue for Even Better Fight Scenes than the first, including a couple that I would happily declare to be 'all-timers'.
Steam ID XBL: JohnnyChopsocky PSN:Stud_Beefpile WiiU:JohnnyChopsocky
The sequel is good, some people like it more than others. Its worth a watch.
Ever see Kung Fu Hustle? It relies heavily on effects, but that movie has styyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyle.
I second ong bok, I havent seen it in forever but its a pretty good watch for the genre.
Maybe it's time for a drive-in revival
The only thing I didn't like about Kung Fu Hustle is that I super expected them to bust out ballroom blitz at an opportune moment and they never did.
There was a drive-in near where I used to live in Salt Lake. Only went there a few times, but it's definitely a fun experience.
Steam | XBL
We've got one here and I usually go a couple times per summer. Double feature for like $8 ain't too shabby. Sometimes they have really good double feature lineups, too (Shazam + Endgame was probably the best I can remember, followed by Zootopia + Force Awakens). Seeing a Star Wars movie under a starlit sky was fantastic.
Oscar: From Here to Eternity
Palme: The Wages of Fear
Lion: N/A - not awarded despite a great lineup
Bear: also The Wages of Fear
So it's only two movies this year. Interesting that The Wages of Fear won the top prize at two of the biggest festivals. I don't think that's happened since, as festivals usually secure world premieres for their competition slates. Of course this doesn't keep them from winning big at the Oscars---that happened just last year when Parasite won both the Palme and Best Picture. Anyways, thoughts on the two films:
The Wages of Fear is something a little more special. For one, it has an extremely novel concept: desperate expats in South America who take a job trucking nitroglycerine through a dangerous mountain road. Director Henri-Georges Clouzot builds a sweaty, cruel atmosphere and has a lot of fun creating a set of increasingly hellish setpieces. Backing the truck onto a rickety platform, or using the cargo to blow through a boulder blocking the road are masterfully mounted sequences of visual tension. Its a hallmark existential thriller, but one that is perhaps a little too nihilistic for its own good, with its dreary start and brashly ironic ending. Still, the meat of the film, the journey itself, makes it necessary viewing.
So The Wages of Fear is my pick. I guess Berlin and Cannes both get a point!
Scorecard:
Venice: 1
Cannes: 1
Berlin: 1
Oscars: 0