Somehow unrelated to its three predecessors, Silent Night, Deadly Night 4 follows the story of a journalist named Kim who, upon learning of a recent case of spontaneous combustion, decides to launch an investigation into the subject. Desperate to get approval from her boss, she offers to run the story for him, but as usual is pushed to one side. “Boys will be boys,” asserts her straw-haired colleague, but Kim is undeterred and starts researching independently. While at a bookstore, she encounters the proprietor Fima, who takes her to the spot on the roof where the woman had died. Visiting Fima at her home proves to be a wrong move when she passes out and subsequently wakes up to a visceral initiation ceremony involving rats and cockroach larvae.
The theme of Christmas has apparently been waylaid here, with only scant references to religion and the Bible to explain the festive setting. For the most part, director Brian Yuzna gives us gruesome insects with sexual overtones and sham pagan rituals in lieu of a story, Kim’s draw to the pathologically sinister Fima too obscure to be believable. Nonetheless, this fourth instalment in a famously tacky horror series is remarkably entertaining, with some godawful dialogue and subpar acting. Clint Howard, the physiognomically-challenged brother of director Ron Howard, portrays a creepy vagrant named Ricky (most likely a high point in his career), while former Bond girl Maud Adams is hilariously rigid as Fima. Naked Lunch it ain’t, but there’s fun to be had.
Intercut with footage from old Danish films, this peculiar anthology film invites twenty international directors to direct short films about Danish women, and the open brief makes it hard for the viewer to travel from one film to the next.
The Weather – short remake of Berlin, Symphony of a Great City?
Expectations – interview snippet which means little out of context
Me – dark, brooding depiction of sexuality, with notes of sci-fi
Meditation – entertaining portrait of a loving matriarch with an unusual hobby
Danthing – utterly surreal computer animation, reminiscent of Guy Maddin
My Things – sentimental, and a sweet interpretation of the title;
Light Apparel – baffling proverbial piece about gender inequality
Archaeology – mildly interesting documentary which discusses the Sami people
Centre – superb experimental short which keeps a moving ball at the centre of the screen
Life In Six Steps – ambitious Reggio-esque documentary which doesn’t quite gel together
Berlin Retour – unusual time-travelling WWII short with a questionable aesthetic
Casting – weak comedy which aims to subvert the stereotypes of Danish women
Peeping – culture-shock drama; feels like an excerpt of a bigger film
Dreaming – typical political fare from Dušan Makavejev, with cheeky self-reference
Bliss – inaccessible fragment of a conversation between the artist and Vietnamese friends
My Father – touching short about memory; could have been longer
Pork And Apple Stew – dreadful absurdist animation
Rhythm – decent piece on samba, although tenuous link to the theme
A relic of the Japanese craze for extreme video nasties in the 1980s, Women’s Flesh: My Red Guts eschews any notion of plot, instead displaying the slow, painful suicides of two mentally disturbed women. The film opens with a series of overexposed stills of the deceased women, presumably from a coroner’s camera, although the content of the photos implies an inappropriate sexual fascination with them. We then see the first woman attacking herself with a toothbrush, as if taken over by some demonic force. She then runs a knife around her mouth before slicing through her tongue. The second woman, sat against a black curtain, sits distracted before slowly committing hara-kiri. Hazy black and white interludes add scant detail to the women’s emotional deterioration.
While there have previously been intellectual cinematic explorations into sado-masochistic practices, Women’s Flesh disturbingly appears to be designed solely for thrills and, quite terrifyingly, is not the most extreme feature by infamous director Tamakichi Anaru. Nothing in the film suggests the viewer’s need to ‘understand’ or empathise with these women, their actions little more than a graphic display. Though utterly abhorrent in its themes and purpose, the film is at least interesting for its extremely lo-fi shooting style. VHS artefacts make each image difficult to make out, while a soundtrack of noise and electronic blips adds a supernatural element to the proceedings. Far too pointlessly morbid and puerile to warrant attention, Women’s Flesh is a bewildering bit of VHS-era gore designed merely to shock and disgust.
Filmed for Swedish TV, Ingmar Bergman’s The Marquise de Sade, inspired by Yukio Mishima’s play Madame de Sade, places six women in the same room, all of whom had some form of connection with the Marquis de Sade. Despite the disapproval of her mother and sister, Renée de Sade often finds herself dreaming about her husband in an unusually favourable light, showing that her devotion has in some way blinkered her from his lasciviousness. La Comtesse de Saint-Ford, dressed in an androgynous yellow suit and jodhpurs, grills de Sade’s wife about their sexual activity with a sinister fascination.
The idea of evoking male dominance in sexuality through the accounts of women brings to mind de Sade’s The 120 Days of Sodom, which Pier Paolo Pasolini famously adapted in the seventies as Salò. Like Pasolini’s film, The Marquise de Sade is the result of countless revisions, keeping the Japanese music of Mishima’s play but reinventing the cast as Swedish noblewomen. In composing his play for television, Bergman balances theatre with cinema, taking advantage of close-ups to generate a sense of intimacy where necessary. There is a peculiar sensuality in the women’s dialogues which is echoed in the vibrant colour palette, and Dangerous Liaisons springs to mind more than once. De Sade’s absence is notable, but his hold over people is palpable as each woman deals with her individual morality. With superb performances by a familiar cast, The Marquise de Sade is further evidence that Bergman was a true master of dramaturgy.
Thomas Köner is a German media artist who works in both video and music, combining the two to create unique ambient experiences. His area of fascination seems to be the North Pole, and all of his installations focus intently on the natural beauty of this area. This project, Nuuk, comprises a series of desaturated images of the Greenlandic capital, ice sheets dominating the screen, and the framing often suggests that these stills could have been culled from CCTV footage. One image, taking in a snow-covered street lined with drab apartment blocks, slowly mutates into a nocturnal scene, coloured lights emerging from windows. The music gently sweeps the viewer through the experience, using a variegated wall of electronically produced tones.
If it had to be categorised, Nuuk would best align itself with the voyeuristic works of James Benning and Sharon Lockhart, its wordless presentation encouraging the viewer to let go of all previous understanding of cinema and enjoy the experience. One is led to feel as if the music is somehow being produced by the ice itself, as there is a deep, raw quality to the soundtrack that defies musical classification, and the texture of the video harmonises with this. Though successful, it is tempting to consider what effect the film would have if there was movement in each ‘still’, for example if a person were to be seen walking through the city scene. Not for the impatient, Nuuk is a twenty-minute film in name only, and deserves one’s full attention.
Mee pok is a variety of noodle served in coffee shops and street stalls alike, often accompanied by fish balls. The unnamed hero of Eric Khoo’s debut feature, the titular ‘mee pok man’, deals exclusively in the foodstuff, and the all-night licence on his restaurant means that he meets some interesting characters. With a constant stream of customers from all walks of life, the mee pok man finds it difficult to keep his mind on one thing, except for long-suffering prostitute Bunny who frequents the restaurant with her gal pals. The mee pok man is intimidated by the men in Bunny’s life, but when her pimp beats her up and abandons her, he seizes the opportunity to become her knight in shining armour. The two grow close, but how far can this relationship go in such a day-to-day existence?
Through patient development of each character, Khoo plays the story out at a decent pace and gives particular consideration to the audience’s experience. We see Bunny before we learn about the mee pok man’s longing for her – the film challenges the viewer to see the warmth and vulnerability in Bunny in the same way that he does. Bunny herself has the potential to be a fascinating character, caught between the prospect of cosmpolitan living with her English photographer boyfriend and her drab career in the underworld, but there is little convincing emotion brought to the role. Though marvellously lensed, Mee Pok Man is a middling experience that will leave one wanting.
Echoing a lot of the experimentation he had done with music, John Cage’s only feature film project One11 And 103 pares film down to its most basic concepts. The subject here is light itself, the very Urschleim of photography, and its behaviour in the film often runs in counterpoint with an orchestral work that Cage wrote specially for the project. Employing what sound theorist Michel Chion calls ‘synchresis’, the film binds both sonic and visual experiences together through mood and intensity. Though Cage and fellow composer Andrew Culver specifically designed the lighting arrangement so that it would be randomised to some degree, there are several audio-visual harmonies throughout the film. The grain of the film adds an extra urgency to these photographic abstractions.
It would be cliché to call the work ‘brave’ for its simplicity, especially in light of the achievements made earlier by artists like Norman McLaren and Tony Conrad, but there is something excitingly new about One11 And 103, even seeing it 18 years later. Being denied the ability to gauge even space or time in a film is an alienating experience, and this is precisely what Cage and Culver appear to reference in their collaboration. Naturally, it can get quite frustrating to watch, even if one knows what to expect from Cage. The audience is always kept on the surface of the film, but the more open-minded viewer may sink deeper, finding elementary patterns in either the visuals or the composition – this could easily be minimalism’s Fantasia.
Challenging the tenets of the documentary, Sharon Lockhart’s hour-long film Goshogaoka portrays a routine performed by a girls’ high school basketball team. The film opens with the team running laps of their school hall-cum-gymnasium, introducing the stage space of this balletic piece as well as its ‘characters’. To a repetitive chant, the girls warm up their bodies with a series of exercises. The monotone of the chant serves to underline the functionality of the drills, with only minor slip-ups in keeping the rhythm together. The exercises progress for about forty minutes before the girls change into tracksuits to act out preparation for a match. The film comprises six still shots more or less equal in length, and the camera never moves from its fixed position, the closed red theatre curtains looming over like a spectator.
Though minimalist in terms of how it operates as a film, Goshogaoka appears to reference other borderline cinematic works, such as Frederick Wiseman’s documentary High School, or Matthew Barney’s Cremaster 1. Lockhart worked closely with ballet choreographer Stephen Galloway to produce a routine for the girls to perform that looked realistic but also benefitted the film’s aesthetics, and the effect is convincing. One interesting shot sees pairs of basketball players throwing the balls to one another, a practice which gradually falls out of rhythm and becomes a piece of visual syncopation. Beautifully composed with subtle yet sinister sound design, Goshogaoka is an unclassifiable piece of art, deceptive in its role but a nonetheless magnetising watch.
The Aum Shinrikyo group, now known as Aleph, are a cult religion in Japan whose central tenets combine elements of Christianity and Buddhism. In 1995, the group was reviled for a sarin attack they carried out on a Tokyo underground train, which killed at least twelve people. The attack was supposedly arranged by the cult’s leader Shoko Asahara in response to rumours that the police had planned to raid his headquarters. In his documentary A, investigative filmmaker Tatsuya Mori managed to integrate himself into the cult’s headquarters shortly after the attack, spending time with members to understand them as people. Spokesperson Hiroshi Araki cuts a bashful image, and one wonders how, if at all, he was selected as a representative given his relative ignorance to the origin of the attacks.
The film plays out as a sort of press pack, arranging interviews and news items chronologically to measure the repercussions of the attack. Rather than sensationalising events unnecessarily, Mori remains as neutral as possible, an approach which allows the subjects to loosen up and contently discuss their beliefs. For the first half of the film, it is hard to conceive of the dangers of a cult represented in the media by someone like Araki, but as Mori probes deeper, he unexpectedly uncovers a stash of chemicals in a storeroom, instantly changing the audience’s perception of the film. At 133 minutes, it may be a little longer than necessary, but A is otherwise a respectably unobtrusive profile of a terrifying sect.
Mere seconds after entering a bar in a small German village, a land surveyor known only as K (Ulrich Mühe) is met with disproportionate revulsion. His every move is challenged, and some of the villagers inform him that he is not allowed to be there, despite K’s insistence that he had been appointed to work on the local castle. The next morning, K encounters Arthur and Jeremias, two simple men who have been told to serve as his assistants, but who serve to do little more than annoy. During his uncomfortable sojourn in the village, K receives intermittent communication from Klamm, his unseen employer, who sympathises with his confusion but does little to help. Rather than waking up each morning to work, K finds himself wrapped in more red tape each day, and both Klamm and the castle soon seem like figments of his imagination.
It is hard to imagine a modern director more suited to adapt Franz Kafka’s final work than Michael Haneke, who has made a name for himself creating unsettling psychological dramas. As in Kafka’s book, the threat is intangible but palpable throughout, and Haneke keeps a rhythm to the film with abrupt fades to black. The film is however weakened by a narration which detracts from the cinematic illusion. While a difficult character to portray, K does not feel as in conflict with his surroundings as he does in the book, but Haneke does well to represent his frustrations realistically. Not perfect, but an admirable effort.
In the middle of the Uzbek desert, a blond-haired woman limps aimlessly, bandages adorning her body. Spied by a father and son team of hooded shepherds named Bo and Bu, she is fitted with a makeshift leash and dragged behind their cart like an animal. At first, Bo and Bu appear to show some affection for the woman, whom they name Ba. They feed her, wash her and take care of her as if she were a member of their flock. Before long, the two men find themselves vying for her attention, but are unable to shake off their obsessive objectification of her, and she is violently thrown around between the two like a ragdoll.
The film portrays the men as unpolished savages, unable to communicate beyond monosyllables. It is alleged that the film sparked controversy in various Central Asian countries for such a blunt depiction of the area, but director Ali Khamrayev quite pointedly does not associate the film with any specific country, saying only that it takes place “11,000km from New York”. In spite of this, the film seems to only really have one thing to say. The woman, played by Arielle Dombasle, stands apart from the backdrop as a blue-eyed, pink-lipped Barbie doll, an icon of all things European. Her presence in the desert alone seems to be the catalyst for the shepherds’ downfall, evoking a simple statement on European influence. Neither a straight drama nor a hilarious parody, Bo Ba Bu is an unusually mixed bag.
In his 1991 found-footage project Lyrical Nitrate, filmmaker Peter Delpeut strings together an abstract ode to cinema. The footage, culled from various turn-of-the-century films from the collection of distributor Jean Desmets, had originally been printed on coloured nitrate film stock which has left the images in some way deteriorated. Delpeut arranges his film clips into categories which evoke the experiences of watching film. For example, the first segment, ‘Looking’, sees actors in various films addressing the camera with their gaze, accompanied by a frenzied attack of intertitles in different languages. The film doesn’t follow a strict narrative, although a basic sense of mortality is echoed in its structure.
Though some might say that the similarities between Delpeut’s process and the one Bill Morrison used for his 2002 film Decasia are so close as to suggest plagiarism by the latter, such a question ignores the nature of the found-footage genre. As Jean-Luc Godard once noted, “it’s not where you take things from, it’s where you take them to”. This however does not excuse the two films from comparison. Whereas Decasia creates controlled chaos through its presentation of odds and ends of unknown films, most of them damaged beyond recognition by natural causes, Lyrical Nitrate honours cinema through identifying patterns. Montages of similar clips from different films suggests an element of collective perfectionism, as if filmmakers were constantly collaborating to document life as best as possible. The film’s everchanging colour values have a hypnotic effect, rendering the film a gentle, ghostly experience.
In something of an unconventional story arc, an American supermodel named Mona travels to Ghana for a photo shoot, only to be transported back in time to the slave-trade era by a local mystic. In her new incarnation as house servant Shola, Mona encounters a world of injustice and suffering in complete contrast to her cosmopolitan lifestyle. Through contact with two other slaves, she begins to see life from the other end of the hierarchy, and shares their righteous indignation as they fight the system. Shango, whom Mona falls in love with, is not afraid to use physical intimidation, while Nunu’s battle is far more personal, her mixed-race son an icon of enforced assimilationism.
The film’s title Sankofa (also the name of the mystic) is a succinct Akan word meaning “to revisit to the past, remember it, and use it to understand the future”, and aptly summarises the film’s intent. Despite the farcical nature of the story (time travel and real world history nary a serious film make), Haile Gerima treats the subject of slavery with the utmost care, pairing the frightening image of Mona stripped almost to the bone with a raw soul soundtrack. His somewhat commercial treatment of the film is a reminder that not nearly enough films have been made about the Maafa, or the African Holocaust. But as emotionally affecting as it can be, Sankofa seems to be missing something, particularly in making the link between Mona and her need to discover the history of slavery.
Hamza is an alcoholic poet who stubbornly remains in Sarajevo as his family flees the country during the Yugoslav war. Surveying the debris in his own house, he comes across two young brothers, Adis and deaf-mute Kerim, who have been left orphaned. Hamza is initially unsympathetic towards the boys, but as he comes to understand what it means to be without a family, he promises to help them find their aunt Aicha, their only living relative. The search becomes increasingly emotional for Hamza, and he begins to hallucinate about his absent family. The group later encounter an Alsatian which has cruelly been shot in the leg, a shocking reminder that they are always at risk of dying.
Director Ademir Kenović is unrelentingly blunt in his portrayal of the war, and even in the first five minutes, we see the orphans escaping machine gun fire. However, Kenović maintains that the war is merely a backdrop for the real drama, that of storgic relationships born out of necessity. The camaraderie between Hamza and the boys is believable, to the point that you forget they were originally strangers. Exceptional use is made of the wartime setting – in fact, it’s near impossible to think of another film which dares to create theatre in such a freshly damaged area. Frequently, a scene will sink into comfortable playfulness, only to be interrupted by an ear-shattering explosion, and the effect is terrifying. Forget the meretricious slushiness of Life Is Beautiful, this is the war film to watch.
Breakfast is an important meal. It sets you up for the day and gives you the required nutrients, no more, no less - it's a square meal. And this, in a way, is what this film review blog is meant to do. No matter what sort of film it is, every review gets exactly 250 words - just enough to get your RDA of plot, background info and critique.
I try my best to watch and review films from all over the place, in the same way I might have French toast one morning, and Coco Pops the next. Anyway, I'll leave you to get stuck in. Feel free to give me feedback, ask me where to find films, tell me off for unfair comments... I'm all ears. Bon appétit!
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