Cronos: Early Guillermo del Toro interpretation of the vampire mythos. Basically about the fear of aging and death, and resisting the temptations of power.
Let the Right One In: Applies the Scandinavian genre of films about creepy dysfunctional children to the vampire mythos. Mostly a poignant and disturbing meditation on psychopathy, sociopathy, deviant sexuality, exploitation and enabling, but somewhat let down by an inadvertantly hilarious scene involving CGI cats.
Thirst: Gory Korean gangster-flick take on the vampire mythos. The general message is, never piss off either a) your daughter-in-law, or b) the village priest.
Movie count for 2012: 24
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Sunday, March 04, 2012
French leave
La Regle du Jeu: Apparently a classic of 1930s French cinema, exploring bourgeois social mores. I was kind of bored by it. Apparently the story involves a cat getting shot, but since the cat in question runs to the left of the picture and the actor fires his gun to the right, it's hard to tell.
Movie count for 2012: 21
Movie count for 2012: 21
Catching up
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada: Story of one man's quest to piss off another.
Cronos: Early Benedicio del Toro film; the body horror is less understated than in his more recent material, but it's still a disturbing and strangely touching take on the vampire theme.
Barton Fink: A tale of creativity, hypocrisy, and why it's not a good idea to get on the wrong side of an insurance salesman.
The Reader: Better-than-I-expected adaptation of the book. An intelligently ambiguous story about the German people's difficulties in coming to terms with the Nazi past.
The Ladykillers: Saw this right after seeing the West End play version of it. The film is less laugh-a-minute, but has more in the way of sinister atmosphere and visual humour; it's also really interesting to see what the King's Cross/St Pancras area looked like in the 1950s.
The Time Traveler's Wife: Somewhere, there's a plagiarism lawsuit waiting to happen involving this film, and everything Steven Moffat's written for Doctor Who.
Movie count for 2012: 20
Cronos: Early Benedicio del Toro film; the body horror is less understated than in his more recent material, but it's still a disturbing and strangely touching take on the vampire theme.
Barton Fink: A tale of creativity, hypocrisy, and why it's not a good idea to get on the wrong side of an insurance salesman.
The Reader: Better-than-I-expected adaptation of the book. An intelligently ambiguous story about the German people's difficulties in coming to terms with the Nazi past.
The Ladykillers: Saw this right after seeing the West End play version of it. The film is less laugh-a-minute, but has more in the way of sinister atmosphere and visual humour; it's also really interesting to see what the King's Cross/St Pancras area looked like in the 1950s.
The Time Traveler's Wife: Somewhere, there's a plagiarism lawsuit waiting to happen involving this film, and everything Steven Moffat's written for Doctor Who.
Movie count for 2012: 20
Think of the children
M (ein Stadt sucht ein Moerder): Fritz Lang's first (partial) sound film. Draws disturbing parallels between police and criminal organisations, while also managing to condemn vigilantism.
If...: A good counterargument to anybody who claims that all these teenage rioters need is strong authority figures and military discipline.
Beguiled: Proof that it's not just male schoolchildren who can go, homicidally, off the rails.
Baader-Meinhof Complex: Scary docudrama about the German terrorist organisation, providing context for their actions while also revealing the brutal infighting within the group. Also draws disturbing parallels between police and criminal organisations, while managing to condemn vigilantism. Costarring the ubiquitous Bruno "Hitler" Ganz.
Movie count for 2012: 14
If...: A good counterargument to anybody who claims that all these teenage rioters need is strong authority figures and military discipline.
Beguiled: Proof that it's not just male schoolchildren who can go, homicidally, off the rails.
Baader-Meinhof Complex: Scary docudrama about the German terrorist organisation, providing context for their actions while also revealing the brutal infighting within the group. Also draws disturbing parallels between police and criminal organisations, while managing to condemn vigilantism. Costarring the ubiquitous Bruno "Hitler" Ganz.
Movie count for 2012: 14
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