The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

USA/France | 2005 | Directed by Tommy Lee Jones

Logline: A ranch foreman honours the final Mexican burial wishes of his murdered best friend and makes sure the man responsible, an arrogant and reckless Border Patrolman, is held accountable.

Tommy Lee Jones plays Pete, the aging rancher, whose cowboy buddy, Melquiades (Julio César Cedillo) , an illegal immigrant, finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time; trying to kill a loitering coyote, and is subsequently shot dead by a livewire gringo, Mike Norton (Barry Pepper), who mistakenly thinks he’s been shot at. Pete makes it his duty to ensure Mel is given a proper burial, and that means exhuming his body from the hasty job ordered by dodgy sheriff Belmont (Dwight Yokam), dragging his killer along for the dangerous journey across the border to find Mel’s original homestead as a form of punishment.

There is much to savour in this languid, but compelling narrative. Although an original screenplay, written in Spanish directly for the screen by Guillermo Arriaga (Tommy Lee Jones then translated into English, yet retained the title and chapter cards in dual English-Spanish), it unfolds with the subtleties and richness of a novel. There are several stories being told. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is the main story, but peripheral tales interweave, and characters that bristle and perspire with elusive significance, slide in and out of the narrative arc.

The Border Patrolman’s bored and restless wife, Lou Ann (January Jones), who dances between the sheets with Mel, the sly and mischievous waitress at the local restaurant, Rachael (Melissa Leo), who’s having affairs with both Belmont and Pete, the blind gringo in the middle of the desert, the Mexicans who tend to Mike’s snakebite, there’s Mel’s estranged wife (or is she?), and I’m compelled to mention the stunningly beautiful Lorena (Elena Hurst), the Mexican girl and her papa whose cart is stuck, but whose only scene was deleted.

Three Burials is a deep, dark morality tale, a parable of ethics and conscience, of humanity and inhumanity. The movie is infused with a stark and raw poetry, not unlike the Western “legends” of director Sam Peckinpah. Tommy Lee Jones handles the directorial duties with consummate ease (curiously, Luc Besson was one of the movie’s producers), added by superb cinematography from British cameraman Chris Menges, and a melancholic score from Marco Beltrami.

The narrative drifts like the sands of time, is quietly punctuated by four “chapters” (The First Burial, The Second Burial, The Journey, The Third Burial), but finishes with frayed edges, despite the quixotic journey having brought the two disparate men – the old man of the land and the young man of the law – to a mutual understanding of each other’s purpose and contrition. The performances of the entire cast are consummate (as is always the case when a skilled actor steps behind the camera).

That’s not to say the movie is without a sense of humour, albeit wry and cracked, like the leathery pocked skin of Pete’s weathered mug, or blackened like the petrified hide of Melquiades’ mask. There is a distinctly morbid odour that lingers over this tale, yet never pungent enough to warrant wrinkling your nose; instead you turn your head to admire the desert flower that’s blossomed from the nearby cactus, and count your blessings; there is good in the world as there is bad, death walks in the shadow of life, while love keeps life on its toes.

In A Better World

Hæven | Denmark/Sweden | 2010 | Directed by Suzanne Bier

Logline: The lives of two troubled families cross paths when the two respective sons are embroiled in bullying and revenge.

Winner of the Best Foreign Language Film Award at the 83rd Academy Awards In a Better World is a powerful and deeply affecting drama that toys with thriller stylistics, and burns with a poetic intensity. Its original Danish title translates as The Revenge, and it is a tale of human frailty, loneliness, courage, and acceptance that resonates long after the final image fades.

Anton (Mikael Persbrandt) is a surgeon who commutes from his idyllic town in Denmark to the terror-torn desert of an African refugee camp. His wife Marianne (Trine Dyrholm) is estranged, due to his own failings as a husband, while his ten-year-old son Elias (Markus Rygaard) is withdrawn, and is being bullied at school.

Claus (Ulrich Thomsen) has lost his wife to cancer and is bottling his sorrow, while his his son Christian (William Jonk Neilson) harbours deep resentment at his father for seemingly emotionally abandoning his mother at the end of her battle. Christian seeks empowerment through fighting Elias’s bully battle. Through Christian’s recklessness and Elias’s naiveté there will be tears before bedtime … and blood spilled.

Susanne Bier has directed a masterfully structured movie from an equally masterful screenplay by Anders Thomas Jensen, which weaves, slaps and caresses with strong strokes and surprising twists. Her mise-en-scene is immaculate, juxtaposing scenes of inner character turmoil and implicit violence with symbolic touches of tranquility; ducks across a dusky sky, windmills cleaving slowly, the branches dancing in the breeze.

While the cinematography and camera work shines, its Bier’s superlative casting and the magnificent performances of adults and children alike make this movie so triumphant despite the ugliness of some of its central themes, such as dishonesty, retribution, and betrayal. In fact, it is the limitations that present itself within the primal urge for equality, both right and wrong, that make In a Better World so intriguing. The characters are flawed, but very real. The ironic, bittersweet threads are so very important.

It is the parallels between the third world chaos and the civilized “advanced” cultures that presents audiences with such a rich tapestry of conflicting emotions, and the fragility of humanity. We strive, as intelligent adults, to be better than our enemies, our adversaries; the bullies and terrorists of the world, yet in times of extreme duress and intense emotional pressure we are prone to breaking under the strain and resorting to base, sometimes atrocious behaviour.

In a Better World is a brilliant movie of contrasting empathies: xenophobia and lawlessness vs. compassion and fraternity. Watch for the always-superb Kim Bodnia in a small but pivotal role as an adult bully.

La Belle Noiseuse

The Beautiful Troublemaker | France | 1991 | Directed by Jacques Rivette

Logline: When a young artist and his girlfriend visit an ageing painter and his wife, the younger woman inadvertently becomes the painter’s new muse.

Inspired by a novella, Le Chef-d'oeuvre Inconnu (The Unknown Masterpiece) by Balzac, La Belle Noiseuse existed as a director’s treatment with no script per se, but dialogue was written by Pascal Bonitzer and Christine Laurent. It’s a carefully sculpted study of love and art, of truth and secrecy, of honesty and duplicity. It is one of the few movies to come close to capturing the essence, from preliminary sketch to completed painting, of the painter’s process as artist.

Edouard Frenhofer (Michele Piccoli) is a semi-retired, once famous painter living a peaceful, reflective life in his beautiful Provence countryside estate, with his wife Liz (Jane Birkin), and a young maid (Leila Remili). Nicolas (David Burszstein) arrives with Mariannae (Emmanuelle Béart), along with Porbus (Gilles Arbona), Frenhofer’s agent. Porbus wants new art, but Frenhofer is reluctant, elusive. Nicolas, the budding artist, is restless, and Marianne is ripe. Half-jokingly Nicolas and Porbus suggest that Marianne be Frenhofer’s model, to stir the artist’s creative juices again. 

When Marianne finds out she’s been offered as an objet d’art she is incensed with Nicolas and his assumption that she would happily do such a thing. But at the crack of dawn the next morning she offers herself, partly in spite, partly in curiosity. But the provocateur is quickly seduced by Frenhofer’s casual intensity, as the aging painter admires her natural beauty, especially once she is sans clothes - au naturale - and is able to gently contort her into poses sensual and provocative. 

The veteran artist commences work on the painting he abandoned long ago: “La Belle Noiseuse”. Marianna has now replaced his original muse, Liz, and a struggle for truth, life and sense begins, as the question of where the limit of art lies, or whether art is, in fact, limitless burns through the fabric of resistance. Marianne yearns to discover Frenhofer’s creative secrets, yet it is the artist who probes invisibly, deeper and deeper inside the young woman, extracting another person entirely. 

The movie ebbs and flows at a languid, truly leisurely pace, coming in at an epic three hours and forty minutes, but was also released in a 125 minute-version, using alternate takes, employing a different rhythm, and featuring less nudity under brighter lighting. This version was designed for French television and was re-titled Divertimento. I’ve not seen it, but am curious as to how different the overall experience would be.  

Elegantly directed and sumptuously shot, entirely on location, La Belle Noiseuse is a quietly powerful treatise on the relationship between artist and model, between what is genuine and what is fake; in emotion, psyche, physicality, and ultimately in expression, yet remains as elusive as the spark of imagination. Masterfully understated, gloriously uninhibited, the film, and the mesmerising performance of Emmanuelle Beart, remains an undeniably bold and beautiful cinema statement of artistic nuance and a celebration of nude female pulchritude.  

Moon

UK | 2009 | Directed by Duncan Jones

Logline: When a harvesting contractor, working alone on the moon, is badly injured, the Earth-based company tries to rectify the situation, but a glitch occurs, with alarming results.

Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is nearing the end of his three-year contract for Lunar Industries, working at the Sarong Station on the Moon. The Helium-3 mining operation is mostly fully automated, so for the duration of his contract he works alone, with the exception of GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey), the station’s AI. Bell is responsible for overseeing the harvesters, maintaining operations, and launching the canisters of extracted alternative fuel back to Earth.

There has been a chronic failure with the live feed communication system so Bell is forced to deal with the occasional recorded video messages from his wife, who was pregnant when he left Earth. Not an ideal situation, with Bell beginning to struggle with his coping mechanisms. There’s only a fortnight left before his return to Earth and he has begun to suffer from fragmented hallucinations, one of which causes him to crash the lunar rover into a harvester, rendering him unconscious. 

Bell awakes in the infirmary with no memory of the accident, and begins to suspect management and GERTY are withholding information from him when Lunar Industries HQ announce that a team has been dispatched from Earth to repair the damaged harvester. Bell investigates and makes a startling discovery. 

This is the debut feature from Duncan Jones (who grew up as Zowie Bowie, the son of David and Angie), and he provided the story, the screenplay of which was penned by Nathan Parker. It’s a fascinating premise that deals with the themes of loneliness, identity, corruption, and betrayal. Essentially it’s a vehicle for Sam Rockwell’s superb acting talents, while the narrative balances and probes elements of existentialism and nihilism, yearning and desperation, ethics and mortality. Not forgetting industrial and conglomerate automation, progression and greed. 

Made on a modest budget of $5 million, shot entirely on a soundstage, using miniature models and mostly practical and optical effects, the vibe pulls from the great sf films of the 70s and early 80s, yet manages to avoid looking or feeling derivative. Indeed the production design and art direction bear a striking similarity to Alien, a sly wink that both movies could be from the same universe. 

Moon is succinct, yet provocative, edgy and rewarding. Streaked with melancholy, but provides a lilt of hope. Richly atmospheric, humorous at the right moments, it is one of the more emotionally resonant science fiction movies of the past twenty years, and far more affecting than Christopher Nolan’s epic Interstellar, which covers similar intellectual and existential time and space.  

Moon is a brilliant future retro classic. 

Vivarium

Ireland/Denmark/Belgium | 2019 | Directed by Lorcan Finnegan

Logline: A young couple looking for the perfect home find themselves trapped in a mysterious labyrinth-like neighbourhood of identical houses.

Gemma (Imogen Poots) and her husband Tom (Jesse Eisenberg) are keen to acquire their first home. They have stable jobs at an elementary school, and are happy in their relationship. They visit a local starter home company, and meet Martin (Jonathan Aris), the very odd real estate agent, whose robotic, perfunctory manner has them both disarmed and bemused. They are swiftly talked into following him in their car to the brand new neighbourhood subdivision called Yonder, which promises the perfect forever home on its welcome sign. 

The young couple are happy to humour the insistent Martin. But Yonder is not the Pleasantville Tom and Gemma were reluctantly anticipating. It is something deeply sinister. The first thing that hits you smack between the eyes is the peculiar uniform look of the subdivision. Row upon row upon row upon row of identical homes. And not a single person in sight. Martin takes the curious couple into #9. They reveal that they have no children (yet). Martin makes a mental note. While Tom and Gemma inspect the modest backyard, Martin takes his cue to leave. Tom and Gemma are perplexed, and decide they need to leave Yonder immediately. But Yonder has other, more long term, plans for them. 

Tom and Gemma find themselves trapped in Yonder. They drive around all night long trying to find a way out of the labyrinthine streets, always ending up back at #9. The car runs out of petrol. The next morning Tom climbs a ladder and peers over the roof, only to see identical houses stretching back as far as the eye can see. Adding a strange insult to injury, the sky is perfect blue filled with little fluffy clouds, like out of some Norman Rockwell painting. It’s decidedly creepy. Tom and Gemma are forced to camp, so to speak. Then a baby is delivered in a box on the street outside, with the message, “Raise the child and be released.”

To say Vivarium - a Latin word which describes an artificial environment for studying a living organism - is a surreal analogy on the socioeconomic ruin of capitalism, the inherent fragility of the role of motherhood in the modern world, and the significance of the cradle to the grave, where the parents are conditioned and folded to foster the incubation and product perfect of the child, is putting it mildly. There is the role of gender, of sexism, misogyny, and performance. Of how all of these elements within the family unit exacerbates a terrifyingly mundane reality: the family as a mode of production. Or more precisely, the mother as hegemonic central figure, and not necessarily the biological one.

But on the surface, Vivarium is a science fiction horror tale about a race of super-intelligent extra-terrestrial beings who are using human adults as pawns in their elaborate plan to take over the world. Or thereabouts. And, Vivarium is all about surfaces. The sheen, the veneer, the false sense of security. 

The screenplay by Garret Shanley is a bold and disturbing one, from a story by Shanley and director Lorcan Finnegan. The direction is taut, with solid performances from Poots and Eisenberg, but special mention two of the Yonder “robots”, Aris as Martin and Senan Jennings as the couple’s young boy (though voiced by various adults). The production design and clever integration of visual effects is a stand-out, fuelling the movie’s overtly nightmarish tone and vibe. Indeed Vivarium operates acutely like a genuine bad dream. Those ones were everything begins “normal” then peels away on a slow-burn ruin of increasing weirdness and wrongness. 

But the (un)reality is that Vivarium doesn’t suffer fools gladly, and refuses to offer any simple explanation. It’s a most bitter tea, not for all tastes. In fact, the narrative deliberately denies the viewer any kind of reward, and on several occasions will push the buttons of isolation and parental tolerance. A frightening “tear”, a reveal, close to the movie’s denouement implodes as an exposure of the insidious source of the nightmare, instead ramifying everything the suburban white noise has been blaring out since the movie’s opening sequence which depicts a baby cuckoo fighting viciously for dominance in another bird’s nest as it awaits the mother and the all-important sustenance. 

Life, it appears, is all about jockeying for pole position, and the race is murder. 

Viviarium is available on VOD on Google Play, iTunes, Telstra, Fetch and Umbrella Entertainment, and Foxtel on Demand from May 6.

Saint Maud

UK | 2019 | Directed by Rose Glass

Logline: A troubled, deeply religious young nurse becomes obsessed with saving the soul of her dying patient. 

Hell hath no fury like … God.

Young Katy (Morfydd Clark) is trying to escape her past. But she’s not doing a very good job of it. She was a nurse at a hospital, but something terrible happened, and now she has taken a job, under the name Maud, as a private palliative carer for a woman at her home. She isn’t shy at proclaiming her Christian faith, a recent conversion. Amanda Kohl (Jennifer Ehle) was once a successful dancer and choreographer, but is now mostly bound to her bed and wheelchair due to terminal cancer. Amanda hasn’t got long, and she is determined to be entertained at any hour. She finds Maud’s piousness both curious and amusing.  

It isn’t long before the audience realise just how confused and disturbed Katy/Maud is. She is a tormented soul, desperate for approval from Almighty God in Heaven, and steadily exasperated over what direction she must take in order to fulfil her purpose on earth. She sees Amanda as her path to absolution, and it is her God-given, sanctimonious right to save the woman’s poor, ruinous, sin-soaked soul. Amanda bemuses her anguished carer, even signs a book of Blake’s religious paintings proclaiming Maud, complete with sketched angel’s wings, as her saviour. 

Maud’s psyche is deeply damaged, and through the woman’s unreliable perspective, the narrative twists and turns upside down, as a distraught Maud’s vision narrows to a darkened tunnel, with the flames of redemption beckoning like a scalding torch of truth. Along the way Maud is constantly testing herself, subjecting herself to a kind of flagellation, as she burns and cuts herself, picking off the scabs, even putting inner soles with tacks into her shoes so she must endure agony whilst hobbling through the tiny seaside town. She exhibits mawkishness and resilience, she’s wretched child and seething banshee coiled in the same scattered mind, the same scarred body, twitching, arching, rising from the floor … 

There, but for the grace of God goes Maud. She is seemingly a pawn in a giant, cruel, and brutal chess game of faith. Whichever way she turns she sees signs telling her she is doing the right thing, doing the wrong thing, not doing anything at all, maybe doing too much? When God is inside her she feels ecstatic, possessed even, when God confronts her, even talks to her directly - in what I thought was Hebrew, but I think might actually be Welsh - she is compelled. Amanda Kohl is the vessel to her reaching sainthood, and blood will be spilled in the name of the Holy Ghost. 

Writer/Director Rose Glass, with a clutch of short films to her name, has seemingly stolen the Holy Grail, heralding an instant nightmare classic. Her debut feature is a work of blistering art, dangerous and dark like the shadows of one’s crippling anxieties, yet exquisite in its restraint, its suggestiveness. She has such a beautiful command of mise-en-scene, elicits perfection from her cast, whilst the camera lens lingers with a hypnotic use of close-up, capturing the fragility of flesh and the cold indifference of acetone, a turbulent swirl of beer in a glass, a cockroach perched on the edge of a kitchen sink … Composer Adam Janota Bzowski, also on his first feature, delivers an absolutely stunning score of sinister drones and sub-sonics, etching a steadily building soundscape of pure dread. 

I’m not at all religious, but I find dark fascination in the disquieting vulnerability of those, like Maud, who are so committed to a higher faith, yet rudderless and volatile. This is a kind of first cousin removed of Joker. It ramifies how curiously flawed the human race is; “humankind”, a kind of anomaly, as we’re so embroiled with power, manipulation, corruption, yet so desperately fragile and frightened, searching, clutching, searching, clutching … 

Saint Maud is a masterful portrait of madness, soaked in the brine of despair, blinded by the light of redemption, shocking in its denouement. It’s very rare for me to sign off with five stars so fervently and immediately - even in the unusual circumstances that I watched the movie - but Rose Glass’s study of guilt and the tortured divine has tapped the sublime. 

Saint Maud screens as part of the Fantastic Film Festival Australia, Friday, February 28th, 8.45, Lido rooftop, Melbourne, Sunday, March 1st, 9pm, The Ritz, Sydney, and Wednesday, March 4th, 6.30pm, Lido.

Color Out Of Space

Malaysia/Portugal/US | 2019 | Directed by Richard Stanley

Logline: A secluded farm is struck by a strange meteorite which has apocalyptic consequences for the family living there and possibly the world.

It’s been a long time between spells, but Richard Stanley is back in the feature director’s chair and all is good in the cosmos once again. Or maybe not. As Stanley tackles the big conceptual boots of H. P. Lovecraft and all that deep cosmic dread the author is synonymous with, he brings to vivid life a fresh take on the short story “The Colour Out of Space”, written in 1927. It was Lovecraft’s personal favourite of his short stories, and has been adapted for the screen several times, but nothing as vivid, confrontational and epic as Stanley’s. 

Nathan Gardner (Nicolas Cage) has moved his family, wife Theresa (Joely Richardson), teenage daughter Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur) and son Benny (Brendan Meyer) and their kid brother Jack (Julian Hilliard), to a rural farm (in Lovecraft’s fictional township of Arkham) to start afresh. Whilst Theresa deals with cancer recovery, Lavinia has turned to Wicca to entice white witch positivity, and Nathan has taken several alpacas under the family hood, an effort to foresee the future of farming. 

A hydrologist Ward (Elliot Knight) is camping in the area when an electrical storm brings a meteorite crashing into their yard. He investigates, along with the county Sheriff. Ward discovers the groundwater is tainted and advises the Gardner family not to drink it. The Sheriff isn’t interested in doing anything radical, as it will impact on the dam development. But there are more pressing developments afoot … 

Stanley co-wrote the screenplay with Scarlett Amaris, whom he collaborated with on the segment he directed for The Theatre Bizarre anthology. They move the narrative swiftly, and it isn’t long before the colour out of space is doing very unnatural things on terra firma. Theresa is already under duress, and her distraction leads to injury. Jack is mesmerised by the bright hues emanating from around the yard well, which is where it appears the entity that arrived with the meteorite is holding fort. Nathan’s tumbler of bourbon on the rocks isn’t going to help him deal with his wife’s nasty accident and the children’s subsequent misbehavior. Keep in mind, the ice cubes aren’t what they used to be … 

Performances and production values are all excellent (I’m reminded of Rob Bottin’s special effects makeup work in The Thing), but one of the strongest structures to Stanley’s adaptation is how he seriously he treats the most absurd and fantastical elements. Okay, so Nicolas Cage does go Full Cage in a couple of scenes, although nothing like his performance in Mandy (which totally suited that movie, but I digress …), but Cage’s OTT behaviour - with his unique vocal inflections - doesn’t actually seem out of place in this movie either. This is a family that are being infected by an alien organism that is beyond anything we can rationalise, everyone’s reacting differently, dealing with their own crazy, even Ezra (Thomas Chong), the hippie living at the end of the property. 

One of the key points of the original story was that Lovecraft was particularly interested in creating a truly extraterrestrial being, something that would be virtually impossible for human kind to deal with, utterly outside the human experience (a concept I’ve entertained since I was a lad). The colour itself is never identified, beyond the spectrum we recognise, but is portrayed in the movie with shifting hues of bright, mostly primary colours, but in particular, a shade of mesmerising electric violet. 

The diseased land and the poor creatures - humans included - that dwell upon the tainted earth become more drastically infected/affected, with an especially horrendous outcome for mother and son. It’s as if the alien entity is both feeding upon and struggling to adapt to the strange planet it’s landed on. I’m reminded of two superb adaptations, Alex Garland’s Annihilation, based on Jeff VanderMeer’s novel, and Andrei Tarvosksy’s Solaris, based on the novel by Stanislaw Lem. Both dealing with a powerful alien entity and how it transforms and how it affects the lifeforms that come into contact with it.

With Color Out Of Space the consequences are grim and unknowing in the best possible way that science fiction horror can deliver. The crater in the Gardner’s yard and home was just the tip of the cosmic tendrils. 

And now they’ve become roots. 

Color Our Of Space is released on May 6th

On Demand via Telstra, Google Play, iTunes, Fetch TV, Foxtel & Umbrella Entertainment

Plus DVD & Blu-Ray

The Lighthouse

Canada/US | 2019 | Directed by Robert Eggers

Logline: Near the end of the 19th century two lighthouse keepers find their temperaments and sanity pushed to the limits. 

Taking inspiration from a real event in which two lighthouse keepers became trapped on their station during a storm in 1801, with one dying and the other going mad, Eggers re-worked a contemporary ghost story idea of his brother Max’s into a tale about the two conflicted seamen, “Nothing good can happen when two men are trapped alone in a giant phallus.”

Indeed, The Lighthouse is a study of masculinity and its degradation, taking further tonal influence from the literary works of Robert Louis Stevenson and Herman Melville. But it exists in its own murky chamber of secrets, a decidedly claustrophobic and desperate situation. And as the waves crash, and the seagull squawks, a siren calls through the mist … 

Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe) and Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson) are two wickies, forced to spend several weeks attending the demands of a small lighthouse on the coast of New England. Wake is the grouchy old salty dog, whilst Winslow is the young rookie, green around the gills. They get on okay at the beginning, each man doing his appointed job, though Winslow is itching to man the actual light, which is strictly Wake’s territory, and Wake makes sure Winslow knows this by parading around the top balcony buck naked undercover of the moon. 

The darker corners of the men’s personalities soon begin to ooze through their greasy pores, especially after Winslow is coerced into getting on the sauce with his boss. The boozy brine shed inhibitions and agitates the cabin fever, and it isn’t long before the two men are dancing around the table hurling sea shanties and eventually wrestling on the rotting floorboards, while a storm rages, preventing their departure. 

Early on Winslow finds a mermaid figurine, and later a fleshly encounter which fuels his own sexual vexation. Wake spouts sailor’s diatribes a la Milton and makes harsh demands on his subordinate, and takes offence when Winslow bad mouths the old dog’s cooking, “Ye fond of me lobster, ain’t ye?” The traditionally-embedded gender roles are challenged, man-handled, transmogrified. Yes, a kind of supernatural Lovecraftian element loiters in the creaking cracks, whilst the tentacles of classic Greek mythology - think the fate of Prometheus - probe and wrap themselves around the men and the delicate spires of their desires. 

The Lighthouse is a tenebrous and dysfunctional fantasy of male bravado and fragility, deliberately framed in a vintage box - a very narrow view indeed, just 1.19:1 - in high contrast monochrome. It’s easily the most appropriate and effective use of this ratio and cinematography I’ve seen used by a contemporary director. With a deeply broody score and sound design, Eggers has marinaded a queer oneirodynia that will linger long in the mind. Frustrating and rewarding, as ambiguous and elusive as a pirate’s treasure map, filled with imagery and symbolism sensual and grotesque. 

There is fascination and horror in equal measure as the two men’s homoerotic paths swell in and around each other, the screws of truth unraveling and the tangled fishing net of lies fueling their undoing. I can’t help myself but uncork an analogy such as the following … The Lighthouse is a potent nightcap for the more acquired tastes, especially those who relish the rich and complex Islay whiskies, savouring the peat and iodine, the dark medicine of the sea, elixirs for troubled souls, and a lot tastier than mixing coal oil and honey.

The Golden Glove

Der Goldene Handshuh | Germany/France | 2019 | Directed by Fatih Akin

Logline: During the mid-70s a German serial killer haunts a local bar and district, picking up destitute older women. 

Akin is probably best known for the intense relationship drama Head-On from 2004. He’s made several features since then, but his latest is bringing him a whole new level of attention. It’s the kind of movie that can only be recommended to those with strong sensibilities. Relentlessly grim and grotesque, it’s so dedicated to the grime and squalor of its central character’s living and mental conditions that it seemingly transcends the trappings that would normally bury a study of such ghastliness. 

The Golden Glove is based loosely on the book of the same name by Jeinz Strunk, which in turn is based on the true crimes of one Friedrich “Fritz” Honka, a lowlife barfly who brutally murdered several women during the 1970s, dismembering their bodies, but storing some of the parts within his cramped attic apartment in the seedy area of Hamburg’s red light district. It is at the local dive, Der Goldene Handshuh, where Fritz spends much of his time, surrounded by other drunks, most of whom have fallen out of the Ugly Tree and hit all the branches on the way down. Fritz is no exception, with his squashed boot of a nose, pockmarked skin, greasy hair, and bung eye, not to mention a pathetic shuffle. He drinks Schnapps like it’s going out of style, and fantasizies about a pretty frauline whose cigarette he lit as she looked the other way. 

Fritz is a rapist and cold-blooded killer. He lures aging drunk women from the bar, back to his upstairs hovel, and after plying them with booze and bratwurst he tries to have sex with them, and then in frustration he bludgeons or strangles, or both. He’s a coward and a monster, yet his bar buddies are none the wiser. But the Greek family who live directly below are subjected to the horrendous smells emanating from Fritz’s lair, and Fritz tells the women he brings home that the rank stench is due to the Greeks’ cooking. It’s only a matter of time. 

To call this movie seedy is being complimentary, to call this movie repugnant is by no means a disservice. It is both, and proud of it. But it is also exceptionally well made. It’s a stark portrait, no foul buts about it, a chipped and cracked mirror held up to the depths of depravity the human condition can sink to, a true reflection of darkness. The handsome looks of young actor Jonas Dassler have been completely removed to portray Honka, and his committed performance is one of the standouts of the year, if you can handle it. But, it’s not just Dassler, the entire cast are uniformly excellent. 

The production design, art direction, and costuming are all bang on; the mid-70s’ back streets of Hamburg have been meticulously recreated, decorated, and retro-fitted. It’s impossible to fault the movie in any department. This is a true crime horror movie dressed as a period piece character study. It’s as sordid, nasty and hideous as Mike Leigh’s Naked, and also just as provocative, fascinating and truthful. 

“Life's a card game. If you want to pIay, you have to take the hand you're dealt.” 

The Golden Glove screens as part of the Fantastic Film Festival Australia, Wednesday, February 26th, 9pm & Monday, March 2nd, 9pm - The Lido, Melbourne, and Friday, February 28th, 9pm – The Ritz, Sydney. For complete program visit fantasticfilmfestival.com.au

Bliss

US | 2019 | Directed by Joe Begos

Logline: A talented painter in the midst of a debilitating creative block finds inspiration through a potent drug, but in turn is exposed to something far more insidious and destructive. 

It’s the age old dilemma, the artist in search of their muse. Usually it’s a trip through darkness to find the light, and in this case, that is most definitely what happens, figuratively and literally. This is a journey through hell, where joy and ecstasy are the most elusive of altered states. This is the plight of young Dezzy (Dora Madison), a free spirit in the City of Angels, who flies too close to the sun, and whose admirers are burned along the way. 

Dezzy is an artist struggling with her latest piece (de resistence), waiting desperately for that surge of creative energy that will enable her to complete the large abstract painting in her Los Angeles studio. Her agent is no longer prepared to tow the line, the gallery owner is tired of waiting, her close friends only facilitate her frustration, while her landlord demands the overdue rent. Something’s got to give. 

Dez resorts to familial recklessness and hits up her dealer for something strong. She’s offered a black devil’s powder known as “Bliss” and immediately finds hallucinogenic exhilaration and astral abandon. Cutting loose at a party with hedonistic girlfriend Courtney (Tru Collins) and lover Ronnie (Rhys Wakefield) she ends up in a torrid threesome with the pair, then blacks out. But this is only the tip of the tenebrous iceberg, and the collateral damage will be extensive. 

This is writer/director Begos’ third feature (he also released an action horror called VFW this year). He co-produced, with his production company, Channel 83 Films, a direct nod to Videodrome, and camera operated - the film was shot on Super-16mm and blown up to 2.39:1, and it’s a fabulous looking movie, rich in blacks and saturated primary colours, stunning work from cinematographer Mike Testin. 

This is easily the best movie Begos has made, as his first two features Almost Human and The Mind’s Eye suffered from overwritten scripts, poor acting, and lacked any real style, apart from wearing their Cronenberg influences like flair. Bliss is one of the most fierce horror movies dealing with bloodlust I’ve seen in many moons. 

It’s a study of desperation and addiction, of the inexorable bind of emotional fragility and creative genius, and is channeled as a phantasmagorical descent into madness, gritty and filthy, drenched and sodden with sweat and blood. It is sexy and uninhibited, yet shackled and depraved. It is a perfect little nightmare for those that seek pure horror cinema of an unbridled, transgressive nature. 

A blistering performance from Dora Madison who utterly owns her character, foul-mouthed and sassy, vulnerable and alone, itching, scratching, tearing, gouging, gulping blood, screaming for life. Indie darling Jeremy Gardner plays her hapless fuck buddy Clive, and watch for George Wendt as Pops, one of the grumpy old men in Dezzy’s social circle. All the support cast are solid, but, apart from Madison, the other real star of the film is the special effects makeup design courtesy of Josh and Sierra Russell, truly outstanding work. 

Bliss is an urban vampire flick reminiscent of the nihilism present in the work of Abel Ferrara and the vivid unfettered expressionism that characterises the look of Gaspar Noe’s movies. The score by Steve Moore is terrific, and the use of sourced metal music adds a thunderous punctuation to certain scenes. What it might lack in plotting, it more than makes up for in an all-embracing, urgent atmosphere, a pulsating, visceral intensity, a brilliantly sustained singular point of view, and a consummate ending. 

I am more than happy, I am in a state of fucking bliss. 

Homewrecker

2019 | Canada | Directed Zach Gayne

Logline: An older woman attempts to befriend a younger woman, only to reveal a troubled mind and an insidious agenda.

There’s nothing like a well-executed cat fight, and in Zach Gayne’s wicked two-hander he provides his actors with one of the best little battlegrounds in quite some time. This is a blackly comic pearler. The emphasis is on the contrasting personalities, a delicate, finely-tuned character study at play, and this is one of those delicious ones that descends into ugly territory indeed, yet still remains a comedy at dark heart. Oh, there’ll be tears before bedtime; tears of laughter, tears of sorrow, and tears of pain. Tear being the operative word. 

We begin our battle of the wills in the gym and the yoga class. Michelle (Alex Essoe) looks 30ish. She is being watched by Linda (Precious Chong), a woman going on 50. Alex has missed her period, but forgot tampons. Thankfully Linda happens to be carrying a spare, even though she’s no longer on the rag. Hmmm. Later at a cafe where Michelle is on her laptop working on an interior decorating job in waltzes Linda, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and immediately ingratiates herself, using coffee as  her spanner in the works. 

Before you can say “boiled rabbit”, Linda has coerced Michelle back to her semi-detached dump to peruse a possible decorating job, “What’s your rate? I’ll pay you double! Triple! Quadruple! Hahah, I’m joking!” Michelle tries to dodge a potent tequila cocktail being thrust in her face, and the liquid therapy is smashed on the kitchen floor. Michelle is mortified, Linda is slightly phased, but already calculating her next move. 

Y’see, Linda just wants to advise Michelle on her future with husband Robert, and the prospect of motherhood. She suspects there is trouble in paradise. She’s aggressively friendly. Michelle just wants to get the hell out Linda’s house. And so begins an hilarious and chaotic game of cat and mouse between the two woman, with the husband as the stinky cheese in the middle. 

A nod to the shenanigans of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and a nod to the psycho-drama and thrills of oh-so-many movies, such as Single White Female and Fatal Attraction. Homewrecker is also a disquieting dig at fidelity and loneliness. It sports a cracker of a script, which feels partially improvised. The screenplay is credited to Gayne, Essoe and Chong, and no doubt they must have had a whale of a time throwing lines of barbed dialogue at each other, upping the dramatic ante, throwing caution to the wind. 

It’s a micro-budget feature with a running time that barely clocks in at the required 75-minutes. But it makes for a highly vindictive, very funny hour and a bit. Indeed, the pace is quick, but with some contemplative downtime whilst the two play a board game called “Party Hunks” (an 80s throwback - like all of Linda’s world - designed for the movie), and then back into the combat, with a particularly horrendous denouement you won’t see coming. 

Alex Essoe and Precious Chong deliver terrific performances, seriously good. Chong has the craze-eye down pat, and Essoe provides the perfect counterpoint; centred, but slightly anxious wife becoming increasingly wary. As Chong becomes more and more agitated, Essoe is pushed toward hysteria. The escalation is a mischievous joy to watch. 

Essoe has become one of my favourite indie actors, and Homewrecker sneaks its way into my year’s favourite movies. 

Werewolf

Wilkolak | 2018 | Poland/Netherlands/Germany | Directed by Adrian Panek

Logline: A group of young and older children are liberated from a Nazi concentration camp, but find themselves trapped in an abandoned mansion besieged by vicious dogs. 

The horror of war is nothing to sneeze at, and in writer/director Panek’s portrait of ravaged innocence and ruined humanity the Holocaust is merely the backdrop to another animals-with-bloodlust terror, in this case, ravenous dogs. From the appalling behaviour of humans to the appalling behaviour instilled in man’s best friend, Werewolf is a hybrid horror-thriller-drama about trust and betrayal, survival of the fittest. 

It is the end of WWII, and in the concentration camp known as Gross Rosen a group of eight children, aged from around five to late teens, are liberated and seek shelter with an adult, Jadwiga (Danuta Stenka), in a derelict, abandoned mansion within a nearby forest. They are starving and have little to no food. Quickly they resort to desperate measures. The two eldest, Hanka (Sonia Mietielica) and “Kraut” (Nicolas Przygoda), do their best to facilitate and supervise whatever they can get their hands on, like a single can of dogwood and a bunch of potatoes. Some of the children are so young, they were born into captivity and have never used cutlery before. 

Wladek (Kamil Polnisiak) is the wild card. He’s obviously more traumatised than the others, from all the horrors he’s witnessed. He feels threatened by Kraut, especially as he is fond of Hanka, and knows she is out of reach. He contemplates dangerous, murderous action. But there is more immediate deadly danger; as a pack of freed SS guard dogs have sniffed their way to the property, and the smell of human is making them salivate. Now the kids have to really keep their wits about them, as the dogs attempt to infiltrate the house. 

Werewolf is a gripping and powerful film, beautifully shot by Dominik Danilczyk and expertly cut by Jaroslaw Kaminski. The use of tension and suspense is handled with great skill, and the geography of the wilderness location is both majestic and claustrophobic. The performances are all excellent, especially Mietielica, she’s one to watch, but also Polnisiak, both exhibit a mature understanding of subtlety and nuances it’s so often all in the eyes. Also of note is Werner Daehn as an SS officer from the camp who is holed up in a bunker not far from the mansion. 

I’m reminded of two other war-related films set in the countryside, the first, Lore, directed by Australian Cate Shortland, with focus on the plight of a young woman dealing with the immediate horrors and terrorisation in WWII Germany, and the other, Burnt by the Sun, directed by a Russian, Nikita Mikhalkov, with focus on the plight of a revolution hero who is suspected of being a spy. In both of these the directors capture moments of exquisite, ethereal beauty amidst the horror. One such moment in Werewolf has Hanka alone, finding a forgotten suitcase full of a woman’s finery, including a pretty red dress, which she adorns, and applies lipstick, admiring her sensuous reflection, then slumbers peacefully on the balcony chaise-lounge in the soft afternoon sunlight. 

Werewolf (the title references the planned Nazi “werwolf” resistance force to operate in Allied-occupied Germany) plays with a very familiar scenario, the hapless trapped by marauding beasts, but gives it a much more humanistic edge, and an altogether more vulnerable one. The term out of the frying pan and into the fire comes to mind, but whose snap will do the most damage, the trained killer dogs, the psychologically damaged young boy, or something else? 

One of the year’s best.

Ginger Snaps

Canada | 2000 | Directed by John Fawcett

Logline: The close bond of two sisters, obsessed with the macabre, is tested to its limits when one of them is bitten by a werewolf. 

Sometimes being a girl can be such a bitch … a howling, snarling, hair-bristling bitch. It helps when you have a sister who’ll do anything to make those teething problems a little less painful for you. Ginger Snaps is up in the small pantheon of great werewolf flicks, one of my faves. Why lycanthropy isn’t as popular as vampirism in the horror community is a mystery as looming as a supermoon. I’m thinking the fetid-breathed undead have that whole immortality angle. But I digress …  

The Fitzgerald sisters (Ginger, nearly 16 and Brigitte, 15) are a little unusual as neither have begun menstruating yet. Their mother (Mimi Rogers) isn’t too concerned; it will come in good time, whilst ather just looks and acts confused, utterly ineffectual. The sisters are ridiculed at school, which only aggravates their general misanthropy (hello, lycanthropy!). They are inseparable and spend much of their free time staging and photographing their own highly elaborate death and suicide scenes for a school class project. 

No one seems to understand them, and that bitch Trina Sinclair (Danielle Hampton) with her damn dog, she’s gonna get hers one day! Just you wait! But fate plays a monster card when the two girls are attacked near the woods by a huge beast, and Ginger is savagely mauled. They escape only to discover back at home that Ginger’s wounds are healing at an alarming rate.

Karen Walton’s tidy screenplay plays with the notion of lycanthropy being a physical metaphor for adolescence and, more precisely, female puberty. It’s not so much the full moon to watch out for, but that 28 day cycle, the “curse”, as Ginger affectionately calls it when she and her sister notice she’s got blood on her thigh, and it ain’t from the mangled dog in the park they just found. PMT is going to play havoc with Ginger’s sensibilities. “I thought I had a craving for sex, but it’s to tear everything to fucking pieces!” 

Director John Fawcett has elicited two superb performances from the two leads; Emily Perkins as “Bee” (Brigitte) and Katharine Isabelle as Ginger. Curious to note Perkins was four years older than Isabelle, and is wearing a full wig. Rogers is wryly funny as the vague, but earnest mum, Pamela, while Kris Lemche as green thumb weed dude Sam is solid. Handy that he knows a little about the properties of monskhood (aka wolfsbane), and with his illicit drug knowledge, can prepare the crushed petals into a administrable potion. 

Karen Walton’s screenplay holds up really well, nearly twenty years down the track, with terrific dialogue, mostly the exchanges between the sisters (eg with the early stages of lycanthropy surging and looking for a suitable box of tampons Brigitte asks Ginger “Are you sure they’re just cramps?”, Ginger, doubled-over in pain sarcastically replies, “Just so you know, the words ‘just’ and ‘cramps’ do not go together.”). Also, it must be said, the word “fuck” is used as great punctuation throughout the movie.  

While the special effects are uneven, some decent, others less so, the mise-en-scene and editing keeps everything firmly in check, and Isabelle is so charismatic and commanding in the central role, one forgets the movie’s production limitations. Ginger Snaps is a kind of twisted date flick; it pokes smart, witty fun at our adolescent woes; bullies and sexual frustration, while keeping the horror edge sharp and glistening in the fat moonlight. It’s hip without being self-conscious, and that’s a delicate balance to hold.  

But why is it so many werewolf flicks are part comedy? Another mystery to me.

Dogs Don't Wear Pants

Finland/Latvia | 2019 | Directed by J.-P. Valkeapää

Logline: A father, emotionally barren following the death of his wife, finds his dangerous new sexual predilection fueled by his involvement with a dominatrix.

Juha (Pekka Strang) has a young daughter. She is sobbing uncontrollably in his room as he slumbers. His dream fractures as he realises what is happening. His wife is drowning in the adjacent lake. He dives into the dark depths, but he is too late. The coldness embraces his heart, engulfs his love, and smothers his dreams. And now, years later, with his daugher Elli (Ilona Huhta), a teenager, he hasn’t been able to move on from the tragedy, instead he has formed a fixation with asphyxiation, a dangerous form of self-medication tied to his lonely sexual desire. 

When Elli goes to get her tongue pierced Juha accompanies her, but he is shooed away by the piercer whilst the deed is being done. Downstairs in a dimly lit room he discovers a gimp in front of a wall mirror. It’s a professional dungeon, and the in-house dominatrix, Mona (Krista Kosonen), reprimands his curiosity in brutal fashion. Juha leaves with a sweet taste in his mouth. 

In one of the most original movies in recent years, Dogs Don’t Wear Pants, is a singular portrait of loneliness and joy intertwined in a most complex way. It is an elusive romance that operates like an even more elusive thriller. But it doesn’t reward like a thriller, and it barely rewards as a romance, but it’s one of the best dramas of the year. Imagine David Lynch and Atom Egoyan made a movie together. 

The title refers to the “bad dog” role played by the submissive in BDSM activity. Juha laps it up (excuse the pun), whilst Mona, a professional, finds her own sensibilities being tested. She is searching for something too, and Juha’s combined resilience and frailty is pushing buttons she didn’t know she had. She’s used to playing tough, but Juha wants it tougher. Will there be any kind of emotional rescue? 

Stunning work from cinematographer Pietari Peltola, the movie is shrouded in a tenebrous neo-noir atmosphere. The underwater photography alone is beautiful. Superb performances from the two leads, and a terrific soundtrack – incidental score and sourced club music – gives the movie an even sharper edge. 

Dogs Don’t Wear Pants is not for everyone – and be warned there is an especially ghastly scene involving a pair of pliers - but for those prepared to take Juha and Mona’s journey, it’s ending will make you smile. Hell, you might even snigger from time to time. Considering the intensity of their professional relationship you can be rest assured their relating in the real world will be hunky dory.

Dogs Don’t Wear Pants is screening as part of Australia’s Monster Fest, Saturday, 2nd November, 10pm in Sydney, Canberra, Adelaide, Brisbane, and Perth. Click here for venue details and the full Monster Fest program.  

Joker

US/Canada | 2019 | Directed by Todd Phillips

Logline: A desperate comedian falls prey to his own mental instability and increasing contempt for the society surrounding him leading him to murderous action. 

Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) only wants to give joy and laughter to the world. His dear ailing mother, Penny (Frances Conroy) told him he had a purpose and to smile and put on a happy face. But Arthur hasn’t felt genuine happiness his entire life. You see the worst part of having a mental illness is people expect you to behave as if you don’t. Everyone is one day away from madness. 

“I hope my death makes more cents than my life,” writes Arthur in his journal of scrambled thoughts and paranoid delusions. He hopes to make it big as a stand-up comedian, to leave his sad clown act behind. He struggles to put on a happy face. His social worker feels society’s disregard weighing heavily on the man’s skinny frame. There’s only so much pain and rage that the medication can keep at bay. 

Celebrity talk show host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro) is Arthur’s inspiration, whilst his weary mother is the petal in his hand, the thorn in his side. Just who exactly is Arthur’s father? He needs to get to the bottom of it all, down to the emotional cul-de-sac, where the Manor behind the huge iron gates looms like a shadow from his future past. 

This is a dark and grim study of psychological fragility and inevitable collapse from a director who began his own career with a study of a similar ilk, Hated, a documentary on GG Allin, the punk rocker who alienated his own audiences with his extreme behaviour. Phillips’ portrait of one man’s descent into his own private hell, and those he drags down with him, is very reminiscent of Scorsese’s masterful portrayals of God’s lonely men in Taxi Driver and The King Of Comedy, especially in tone and setting. 

Joker depicts the origins of one of the great comic book villains of all time, and yet also paints a singular picture of a psychopath that could be anyone on the street that passes you. The danger is palpable; the atmosphere is gritty and authentic. Phillips went out of his way to make his movie as realistic as possible, removing it stylistically from the DC Superhero Universe so that it can stand alone, and it stands tall and formidable. 

Joker is an extraordinary film, a powerful and compelling drama, a nightmare movie for the now and here. It is fictional Gotham City, but it is every city in the real world. We’ve all known an Arthur Fleck, or known of, or thereabouts, six degrees of separation, horror at arm’s reach. Superbly filmed, with Phoenix delivering a career performance, Phillips stays close to the character, he’s in almost every scene, we watch him brood and lurk, we watch him fidget and slow dance, oh yes, the dancing. It’s creepy and morbidly mesmerising, like a train wreck in slow motion. 

Joker is confronting and disturbing, yet there’s the darkest kernel of comedy lurking in the bowels, like a kidney stone. “I used to think my life was a tragedy, but now I realise, it’s a comedy,” Arthur states matter-of-factly. His life has become an out of control delusion (the “grandeur” comes at movie’s anarchic end). How much of Arthur’s world is happening inside his cracked mind? Certainly some of it is. We know this much is true because Arthur craves love and intimacy and acceptance. He is an abandoned man. 

Arthur fabricates and hides behind guises, just like Rupert Pupkin in The King of Comedy, just like Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. He searches for peace of mind, but there is only deception and manipulation, only ridicule and humiliation. He’ll have to snatch the facts to uncover an ugly truth, and he’ll need to confront his demons in person. 

Arthur dons his red garb, his face paint a diabolical clown, he skips and skirts down steps, twirling to his own tune, and it’s a glam rock song tainted by the awful sociopathic crimes of its singer, in some kind of hideous (un)intentional parallel. 

“What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash? You get what you fuckin’ deserve!”

Blow Out, Wolfen, Arthur, Zorro the Gay Blade … these are the movies playing in the cinemas on the streets; serial killers, savage animals, the deluded rich, the vigilante folk hero. 

In a mirrored nod to Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, Arthur Fleck leans against a car window as it traces through the ruined nightlife of Gotham City. 

Somewhere a young boy mourns the death of his parents and another seed is born. 

In Arkham Ayslum a psychiatrist asks what’s funny.  

“You wouldn’t get it,” the patient replies, smirking … snarling.

It’s the killing joke. 

Nosferatu the Vampyre

Nosferatu - Phantom der Nacht | West Germany/France | 1979 | Directed but Werner Herzog

Logline: Logline: A real estate agent is sent to a distant buyer to close the deal, but becomes a pawn in the buyer’s dark agenda to possess the man’s wife. 

When German maverick Werner Herzog took it upon himself to direct a remake of what he felt was one of his country’s most important feature films ever made he delivered a portrait just as richly atmospheric, but burnt with a melancholy that sears itself on the viewer’s soul.

Herzog’s Nosferatu is a re-imagining of F. W. Murnau’s silent masterpiece; an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula that doesn’t have to hide behind the guise of changed character names, as the 1922 original did, although curiously Stoker’s novel is again uncredited. Klaus Kinski is Count Dracula, Isabelle Adjani plays Lucy, Bruno Ganz plays Jonathon Harker, Roland Topor plays Renfield, Walter Ladengast plays Dr. Van Helsing, Martje Grohmann plays Mina. Curiously Herzog’s swaps the novel’s roles of Lucy and Mina. 

Herzog wrote, produced and directed, and had two versions of the film shot simultaneously: one in his native German tongue (Phantom of the Night), and one in English to appease 20th Century Fox who were distributing it internationally (Herzog considers the German-language version to be the more culturally authentic).

The narrative floats and drifts like an ornamented funeral barge; dark and macabre, the mise-en-scene blanketed with a shadowy grandeur and desolate beauty; like the white-grey beach that Lucy finds herself wandering along after Harker has gone on his mission to assist the Count in his move from Transylvania to their home town of Wismar. It’s a film lost in time that transcends the ages, haunted and etched. 

The three leads are perfectly cast and inhabit their characters effortlessly; Adjani and Klaus are like a strange reflection, immaculate porcelain skin, eyes wide and dark, and full lips, yet they make for a most powerful dual visage: the juxtaposition of pure innocence, elegance and pulchritude against deep-rooted lust, evil and grotesquerie. All the sound in the movie was dubbed in post-production, which adds a heightened theatricality. Much of the cinematography was shot using available light (adding grain and soft focus), and almost the entire movie was filmed on stunning locations in Europe (Netherlands, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Germany), with the exception of the mummies in the opening scene, which was shot in Mexico.

This is definitely one of Herzog’s most powerful and evocative films - yet as a horror movie, it is a surprisingly rare creature; intensely languid, devoid of any gore (almost bloodless), nudity, or profanity. A haunting soundtrack, courtesy of Popol Vuh and Florian Fricke, tightens the embrace, for there is something deeply affecting about this particular tale of bloodlust. The theme of supernatural possession mirrors a strangely human experience of loneliness and longing; spectres of sex and death whispering close enough to make the hairs on your back bristle. An overwhelming Gothic presence that creeps under the skin and crawls like a pestilence, yet soft and dreamy, that stirs and yearns and echoes across the mountain steppes. 

Although Herzog uses Stoker’s characters names he follows Murnau’s version of events more closely, but changes the very end significantly, departing from both Murnau’s film and Stoker’s novel. It is a curious direction, and one which bothered me years ago, but viewing again in the movie’s fortieth year, I am most accommodating of its cyclical - immortal - narrative. 

Pour yourself a finger or three of very old special pale, and then open the window to let the cool breeze waft through the moonlit room, allowing the children of the night to slide their phantom arms around your shoulder, pulling you closer until you’re shrouded in the darkness of the undead … The music is sickly sweet.

Valhalla Rising

Denmark/UK | 2009 | Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn

Logline: A Norse warrior escapes being a fighting slave and joins a group of Crusaders on a grueling quest for the Holy Land. 

Danish maverick, Nicholas Winding Refn, channels the poetic minimalism of Andrei Tarkovsky, the spiritual mysticism of Werner Herzog, and the violent surrealism of David Lynch into a dark and beautiful tale of degradation, emancipation, redemption, and resignation. Valhalla Rising is the journey of One-Eye (Mads Mikkelsen), a mute Norse warrior, across the rugged landscape of the mind, body, and soul, toward his mortal destiny foreseen. 

It is the Dark Ages, circa 1000 AD, in the misty highlands of Scotland, a terrain of majesty and desolation. One-Eye is a pagan’s slave forced by the chieftain, Barde (Alexander Morten), into fighting to the death for the amusement of his captors. He is very strong and adept and never loses, snapping necks, tearing jugulars, disemboweling his adversaries. By day he is thrust into the mud circle of wrath, by night he is chained inside a wooden cage. A young boy, Are (Maarten Stevenson) feeds him, observing the silent killer with fascination. 

Through visions One-Eye has the ability to see into his own future. This enables him to break from his binds and slaughter the pagan enemies who’ve enslaved him. On his own, with Are following, One-Eye traverses the mountainside and encounters a clutch of Crusaders, Christian Vikings on route to The Holy Land. One-Eye is invited to join their mission, which he does warily. 

Their boat is engulfed by fog and the journeymen become disorientated and confused. Eventually the mist clears and the men find themselves surrounded by the boreal forest, not The Holy Land. They are menaced, and the Christians believe they have entered Hell. One-Eye takes it all in his stride, using the Vikings’ psychological frailty as fuel for his own spiritual progression. They have reached New Found Land, and One-Eye embraces Valhalla. 

Punctuated by chapters, I - Wrath, II - Silent Warrior, III - Men Of God, IV - The Holy Land, V - Hell, and VI - The Sacrifice, Refn, with co-screenwriter Roy Jacobsen, has constructed the narrative with very little dialogue, traveling a powerful visual arc aided by a magnificent and truly evocative score, courtesy of Peterpeter and Peter Kyed, and darkly vivid cinematography, courtesy of Morten Søborg. Refn composes many of shots as tableaux, with One-Eye’s visions saturated in a luminescent red. He inverses some images within the visions creating a sense of displacement; One-Eye’s profile reversed, the rippling ocean upside-down as a fluid sky. 

Certainly the landscape is something to behold; filmed entirely in the formidable terrain of Scotland. Mikkelsen is quietly brilliant in his unspeaking role. All the support cast is solid. The costuming is very impressive, and the extreme violence is executed superbly. I have my reservations over the use of CGI bloodletting, but Refn carries it off okay, and he does use prosthetics in the right place - there’s an excellent hatchet neck wound on one victim. 

The mood and tone is introspective, ponderous in its depth, the characters frequently musing, lost in thought, observing, scheming, then explosions of visceral, brutal violence. I’m reminded of Jim Jarmusch’s mutant Western Dead Man, a similar drifting, existential mood, a movie of moments, of ideas, of feeling, but Valhalla Rising is devoid of Dead Man’s sardonic and bitter sense of humour. 

Infused with elusive, ethereal buoyancy, Valhalla Rising is a jagged gemstone glistening seductively in the abyss, an existential anchor being dragged through the seabed of time and space, it is a movie for acquired tastes, and certainly not for those with little patience. It resonates and rewards, but doesn’t suffer fools gladly. Refn has likened the cinema experience to that of an acid trip (there is even a scene involving the ingestion of a psychotropic drug), and says he was inspired by Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires, and by the curious discovery of a cairn of rune stones in Delaware. 

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

US | 2019 | Directed by Quentin Tarantino

Logline: Three days in the lives of an actor struggling to stay relevant and his stunt double buddy as they deal with life’s little ironies. 

WARNING! CONTAINS SPOILERS!

Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) has had a pretty good run in front of the camera. The studios have served him well, and they’ll be plenty of re-runs. It’s 1969. The Golden Age of Hollywood is fast becoming a memory, soon it will be part of popular culture, as will a notorious and shocking mass murder up in the Beverly Hills, but we’ll come to that part later. For now, let’s focus on Rick, and his laid back buddy, stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) …

Marvin Schwarz (Al Pacino), a fat cat producer and fan of Rick’s earlier career suggests he star in a bunch of Italian productions; the usual fare, spaghetti Westerns, spy thrillers. Rick’s none-too-happy about the prospect, but the reality is, his days are numbered as a draw card. He’s been playing villains for awhile now, and he’s struggling to remember his lines due to his heavy drinking. Cliff thinks Italy is a good idea too. Cliff’s been Dalton’s driver and gopher for awhile, and he’s resigned to it. He even climbs onto the roof and fixes Dalton’s wonky television antenna, showing off his abs (not bad for 55). Next door, at 10050 Cielo Drive, is where the movie star Sharon Tate is house-sitting, along with her husband, Roman Polanski. 

Whilst anxious Rick struggles to get through his new television gig, playing another cowboy heavy for director Sam Wanamaker, Cliff is running errands, and picks up plucky hitchhiker Pussycat (Margaret Qualley), who convinces Cliff to drop her at Spahn Movie Ranch, where Cliff happens to know the ageing owner, George (Bruce Dern). When they get there, Cliff insists on paying his respects to the old codger, but a bunch of dirty hippies, apparently sponging off the ranch owner, try to deter him, especially Squeaky (Dakata Fanning). This is the Manson Family.

It’s obvious, for his ninth feature - QT counts both Kill Bill flicks as one - Tarantino has painted a love letter to Tinseltow, but also to many of the screen delights he grew up. This is the Los Angeles he grew up in. He would’ve been six-years-old when the film is set. He’s described the movie as his “magnus opus”. Apparently he intends only to make ten movies as a film director. Famous last words.  

Shooting on 35mm and having his production design team painstakingly recreate the look of 1969 Hollywood without having to use CGI (only once is it obvious he’s used digital compositing, and that’s with Leonardo inserted into real footage from The Great Escape), this is the second movie Tarantino has made using historical figures, but it’s the first that depicts real events. Tarantino then skilfully weaves his fictional characters through the factual narrative and environments, thus creating a revisionist history. This comes to a head in the movie’s denouement, when several members of the Manson Family arrive at the infamous cul-de-sac intent on murdering the occupants at 10050 Cielo Drive, only to have a drunk and furious Rick Dalton, clutching a full blender of margarita, abuse them for being on a private driveway. They retreat, only to return with their revised agenda to now do the devil’s work on Rick, who they see as a prime example of the Hollywood that taught them how to kill. 

But the dirty hippies weren’t prepared for Cliff and his pit-bull Brandy. 

Having heard much hullabaloo about the ending of Hollywood, I entertained the idea that Tarantino was going to go all meta and have his movie end with the camera pulling back to reveal Tarantino himself and his real crew filming Leonardo and Brad and whoever else, playing their roles. A kind of nod to Blazing Saddles. But the ending I got was a surprise, and a pleasant one. It’s over-the-top, yes, and it pushes the more subtle comedic tone into a farcical one, but I’m okay with that. What I like is the whiff of melancholy that permeates the very ending, as Rick sees Cliff into the back of an ambulance, and then chats to Sharon’s BFF Jay Sebring, who has come down the driveway to investigate the commotion. Sharon chimes in on the intercom, and invites Rick up for a drink. The title of the movie comes up on screen, and you find yourself nodding and smiling. It’s a kind of “fairytale” ending, twisted, yes, but it tugs on the heart strings. 

Hollywood is Tarantino’s most relaxed movie since Jackie Brown, and in many ways, it’s his most endearing, most personable, probably his funniest. Pitt and DiCaprio give terrific performances, a natural chemistry, with DiCaprio’s improvised meltdown in his studio trailer an hilarious highlight. The other splendid stand out in a movie with many great scenes is the sequence at Spahn Ranch, which begins with Cliff picking up Pussycat. This has a suspenseful vibe that made me think Tarantino needs to make his tenth movie a 70s-vibed horror movie in the vein of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. But I digress … 

It’s a languid, incidental ride through vintage Hollywood, seen through rose-coloured glasses, with all the trimmings and trappings. It’s filled to the brim with Tarantino-isms - vibrant “cool” cast and a soundtrack rammed with pop songs of the era - yet curiously I didn’t find the two-hour-forty-minute movie contrived or self-indulgent as many of his earlier movies*. It ebbs and flows like Pulp Fiction, and it’s the first of his movies since then that I’ve had the immediate desire to watch again. 

If Tarantino does decide to throw in the movie towel, I think Hollywood will age the most gracefully. It’s one to be cherished, especially for X-Gens and cinephiles. 

*Okay, there was one scene that irritated me. The scene with Bruce Lee. I was fine with it until Zoe Bell entered and mouthed off. She cannot act her way out of a paper bag. Ghastly. Her performance and accent scuttled that scene, but thankfully, not the movie!

Braid

US | 2019 | Directed by Mitzi Peirone

Logline: Two young women on the run decide to rob their wealthy psychotic friend who lives in the fantasy world they created as children, but to take the money they have to take part in a perverse and deadly game of make believe.

Petula (Imogen Waterhouse) and Tilda (Susan Hay) lay sprawled on a filthy floor, counting cash, sorting a drug stash, hatching plans. But the long arm of the law has reached their grimy apartment, so it’s time to skedaddle, quick smart. The young women jump a train and do some fancy fingersmith work in order to escape the clutches of those they’ve temporarily evaded, Tilda stealing a purse, and Petula prizing fare in exchange for a bootlick from a dirty conductor. These girls are adept at getting out of trouble, but they’re jumping from the saucepan and into the fire. 

Arriving at a majestic, but intimidating upstate NY property, where their childhood friend Daphne (Madeline Brewer) dwells alone (with her demons), the scallywags have now donned more classy threads, for they know what’s required (but not what lies around the corner). The huge Renaissance mansion was where the young women frolicked as children, and now they return as adults to play once again, and purloin Daphne’s inheritance moolah to pay for their sins. 

But they mustn’t forget the house rules: #1 Everyone must play, #2 No outsiders allowed, and #3 Nobody leaves. 

What was once up in the treehouse, with each girl roleplaying “mother”, “daughter” and “doctor”, now resumes in the kitchen, but the ante has been upped, the forfeits more severe. If Tilda and Petula wish to find the safe(ty) they’ll need to do what mother says. It seems the accidental fall that happened all those years ago has been injurious in more ways than one. It also seems that the innocent daydreams of youth have now transmogrified into garish nightmares. Indeed, in this topsy-turvy tenebrous world the fabric of reality is only as firm as one’s loyalty, and that can be twisted and torn as easy as apple pie. 

Delving deep into the realms of fantasy and illusion from narratives gone by, writer/director Mitzi Peirone has fashioned an exquisite-looking study of fractured identities, unreliable memories, and desperate remedies, a danse macabre. Indeed, an oneirdynia of voluptuous abandon and violent repercussion told with a masterful control of the elements, a la 60s and 70s cinema; the paranoia/madness of Repulsion and The Tenant, the deception and duplicity of The Ballad of Tam Lin, the exotic allure and sensuality of Daughters of Darkness, the Gothic textures and unhinged logic of Suspiria and Inferno, the chaos and fetishism of Daisies. It’s a melting pot of cinema magic. 

A mystical veneer that threads with an hallucinogenic edge that screws with mythological symbolism. Weaving like an endless braid. 

For her feature debut Peirone exhibits a vivid talent as director and wields an uncompromising perspective on storytelling, with huge props to Todd Banhazi’s spectacular cinematography - careering through psychedelic colour and raw monochrome, Annie Simeone’s elaborate production design coupled with Lindsay Stephen’s detailed set decoration, and the furious editing by David Gutnik, it’s a truly impressive collaboration. The three leads - Waterhouse, Hay, and Brewer - are sensational, exuding arrogance, sassiness, vulnerability and bewilderment with aplomb, while composer Michael Gatt provides a suitably dramatic score, amidst the effective use of several classical cues.

Stumbling through this kaleidoscopic realm the audience struggles to keep up, the rabbit hole winds deeper and deeper, the threat of violence escalates, the grasp on sanity slips. Just who is manipulating who? What are the truths? What moments are memories? Will the madness and absurdity ever end??

We are only as resilient as our dreams are fragile, only as vulnerable as our desires are real. 

I feel it is inevitable Braid will be my favourite movie of the year, as nothing else I’ve seen is as richly atmospheric, as provocative and elusive, as sexy and dangerous, as frustrating and rewarding, as gorgeous and grotesque in deliciously equal measure, and I doubt anything I see in the next few months will be quite as extraordinary. Peirone has delivered an instant cult classic. Embrace it, or die trying. 

Alice

UK/Australia/France | 2019 | Directed by Josephine Mackerras

Logline: When a married mother discovers her husband’s ruinous addiction to prostitutes she is forced into grappling with her own identity and self-determination. 

Alice (Emilie Piponnier) is happily married with a caring career husband, François (Martin Swabey) and a young son Jules. They live in a Parisian apartment. One morning François says goodbye and vanishes for several days on end. Alice is confounded. Suddenly she is alone with a young child, with credit cards that have been cancelled, and heavy mortgage payments that are threatening to foreclose. Alice is desperate. 

She soon discovers that her husband had been living a duplicitous life, addicted to high end prostitutes, and spending all his money, including all the savings Alice’s father had provided to help secure the apartment. Alice is devastated. But she holds it together. Just. The threat of destitution propels her into digging deeper into her husband’s sordid secret doings. As a result she attends the escort service’s screening and befriends Lisa (Chloé Boreham) who gives her a crash course in tailored sex work. 

Soon enough the initially nervous Alice is earning good money, and has garnered a sense of independence. Her fragility has been conquered, and with it she has embraced a new lease on life. Then François suddenly re-appears, all pathetic and desperate for reconciliation, and her inner strength is challenged. 

This is Aussie director Mackerras’ debut feature, having made several shorts. Although there is nothing Australian about the production, there are universal truths that lie at the heart of this extraordinary character study, penned by Mackerras. It’s easily the most remarkable relationship drama I’ve seen in a long time. It is small, and intimate, yet never once feels constrained or limited in its scope and execution. 

An absolutely brilliant performance from Piponnier who totally owns the movie. But superb work from Boreham, who provides a wonderful sassiness, and perfect contrast to Alice’s rigidity and earnestness. Swabey is also very good, and it’s a difficult role to play. It’s easy to see that Mackerras has a true talent for directing actors. But her mise-en-scene is strong also, as is the score and cinematography. Alice is the kind of narrative that could easily have felt like a play being filmed, but never once suffers from that kind of staged unreality. In fact, there is a real sense of docu-drama to the film.

But Alice isn’t all grim fare, it possesses a lovely natural sense of humour, without the comedy feeling forced. Also - and this isn’t really apparent until the very end - Alice harbours a desire for freedom that she isn’t really aware of until she experiences a degree of it with her new friend Lisa. It’s the kind of freedom one can only experience physically, not just psychologically or spiritually. It becomes a kind of thematic, emotional core.

Alice is a truly wonderful film. An amazing example of a taut screenplay that doesn’t feel over-written, perfectly cast and given excellent direction, with production values that fit like hand in glove. Easily in my top three films of the year, make sure you see it. 

Alice screens as part of the Sydney Underground Film Festival, Saturday, September 14th, 2pm, at The Factory, Marrickville. For more details and tickets click here.