Out of the Past: The Week in Film

Cess Pool Cinema:
1. Ghoulies (1985) Dir. Luca Bercovici - US

The Banal, the Blah, the Banausic:
1. The Doctor and the Devils (1985) Dir. Freddie Francis - UK


Guilty Pleasure Cinema:
1. The Deep (1977) Dir. Peter Yates - US
2. Trick 'r Treat (2008) Dir. Michael Doughtery - US

Astounding Cinema:
7. Horror Hotel (1960) Dir. John Llewellyn Moxey - UK
6. Crazy Love (1987) Dir. Dominique Deruddere - Belgium
5. Coup De Grace (1976) Dir. Volker Schlondorff - West Germany
4. To Catch a Thief (1955) Dir. Alfred Hitchcock - US
3. Kansas City Confidential (1952) Dir. Phil Karlson - US
2. Wise Blood (1979) Dir. John Huston - US
1. Army of Shadows (1969) Dir. John Pierre Melville - France


Theatrical Releases:
1. The Damned United (2009) Dir. Tom Hooper - UK 9/10


You know, I didn't go into watching Ghoulies (1985) thinking it would be a good or even a decent film, but what I didn't expect was something almost worse than Troll (1986). There's no use even going into bitching about the plot---there just really isn't one---it's just bad, bad, bad 80's fare. The saddest part of the whole awful affair is the presence (though brief) of Jack Nance (of Eraserhead, 1977) as a character named Wolfgang. Mariska Hargitay also has a brief appearance. The most notable part of the whole screening was the fact that my Netflix copy was a double feature of this film and Ghoulies II (1987)---and this was notable because, in an unprecedented move, I returned the disc without watching the sequel. For an aficionado as dedicated as myself (I did sit through The Howling III: The Marsupials, 1987) this should be a harsh strike of disdain on my part. Honestly, not worth the time.

As for mediocre films, this week yielded a film that encompasses the word completely, the 1985 adaptation of The Doctor and the Devils, supposedly based on an "early screenplay" by Dylan Thomas. In fact, this film holds a record--longest delay between creation of the script and completion of filming, a whopping 32 years. Featuring two very melodramatic performances (Timothy Dalton as the doctor and Julian Sands---who is always an unsavory over the top performer, as his assistant) mixed up with completely histrionic performances (Stephen Rea and Jonathan Pryce as the graverobbers) and then the completely miscast and utterly dull Twiggy, a prostitute that falls for Julian Sands---though every time he visits her brothel she's curiously the only free one....hmmmm..... Based on a true story of a 19th Century English doctor that would pay more for 'fresh' corpses than rotting ones for the purposes of anatomical education, his suppliers find no qualms in killing the homeless for a higher yield. As many have pointed out, never before has murder seemed so completely dull. The whole time I watched it I wanted to get out a copy of a far superior film based on the same material (and from which Robert Louis Stevenson based a short story) the 1945 Robert Wise classic, The Body Snatcher, featuring Boris Karloff (and small part for Bela Lugosi), that is truly chilling, creepy, and excellent.


I decided I needed to create a new classification amongst this week's selections---I watched two films that confounded me---neither were they so dull to be labeled mediocre, and neither were they well done enough to be classified as astounding. These films will be termed guilty pleasures.

After the success of Jaws (1975), it was only natural that other of Peter Benchley's material would be adapted. Unfortunately, most of Benchley's works are all kind of the same. However, as a kind of mindless adventure film, The Deep (1977), was quite entertaining. Helmed by Peter Yates (of Bullitt, 1968 and Eyewitness, 1981) the film supposedly was an infamous mess of a shoot. It features the reunion of Robert Shaw (from Jaws) with the Benchley material, as well as French sensation Jacqueline Bissett and Nick Nolte. Nolte was in his mid 30's here, so it was irritating to have Shaw constantly refer to him as a 'boy.' The Deep is set in Bermuda, and features a young couple (Bissett and Nolte) diving for lost treasure in the wreck of ship that had contained a lot of explosives. The underwater diving scenes with all the creatures, including icky eels and plenty of sharks, are all breathtakingly excellent. The film is just a bit slow and in need of more thrilling music during it's, errr, meant to be thrilling scenes. Bissett fares alright, but it's mostly her breasts we're meant to focus on. One particularly creepy scene shows her being held down in her hotel bed by island natives while they perform a creepy ritual on her with chicken blood and a chicken foot. Fun! Shaw is always entertaining, and Nolte's alright in a shaggy dog sort of way. Of course, the conflict comes in the form of Louis Gossett Jr as an island native hungry for the cache of highly concentrated morphine still intact in the wreck. The Deep takes a lot of flack for it's villains---they're all Haitian. Meaning, they're all black. Even that aside, the most damning moment has Nick Nolte describing the man accosting them to Shaw - "he looked like a basketball player." Now, nothing against Louis Gossett, but obviously, the only trait he shares with some basketball players is his skin color---so, yeah, it's a bit of the 70's politically correct racism.

And another guilty pleasure selection is the DVD release of Trick 'r Treat (2008), which never got a theatrical releases despite being produced by Bryan Sanger. Sort of a modern Creepshow(1982) set up, the film is basically three different scary stories all sort of interweaved. Set on Halloween in some small midwestern town in Iowa or Ohio or something (where everyone goes way ball's out for Halloween all the time, it seems) the interesting parts of the film focus on Anna Paquin and an entertaining Dylan Baker, who is poisoning children with candy (I suggest watching this right after Happiness, 1998, where Baker is the very memorable pedophile father---he just looks like an abuser of children). The film suffers from an extremely low yield plot line involving dead children on a school bus, as well as sorely underusing Brian Cox. A decent effort, I will look forward to more from director Michael Doughtery.

As for the astounding releases, I was pleased to finally sit down and watch Horror Hotel (1960), a little UK production about creepy witches starring Christopher Lee. The plot is a bit bare, but concerns a young woman doing research on the Salem Witch Trials who is led to a small hamlet in Massachusetts by her professor (Lee) to do some "hard" research. Of course, there' s still witches there! I was mostly intrigued by the uncommon violence in a film from this period---our blonde heroine is stabbed to death by the witches, amongst other surprising elements. Full of creepy atmosphere, I highly recommend this with a double feature of The Seventh Victim (1943), starring Kim Hunter.

Touted by Sean Penn, Francis Ford Coppola and Madonna upon its release in 1987 was the debut of Belgian director Dominique Deruddere, Crazy Love, based loosely on several works by Bukowski. The film is a little all over the place, focusing on three different nights from it's protagonist's life---a sexual awakening as a young boy, a tortured acne laden teen at high school graduation, and a necrophilic romp with a corpse as an alcoholic bum in his 30's. Though much ado was made about the last third of the film, it's not nearly as interesting or well done as the middle segment of the film, in which Harry Voss (Josse De Pauw) has some of the worst acne you'd ever seen, a complete creepshow. To dance with the girl he's fixated upon, he wraps toilet paper around his face and asks her to dance. She accepts. An emotional, triumphant and angst laden segment, this portion makes the film memorable. The existential necrophilia either should have been more shocking or more existential---its art house blend works against it in the last segment.

Volker Schlondorff's then wife and collaborator, Margarethe Von Trotta (the only female filmmaker from the German New Wave) is the star of Coup De Grace (1976), which tells the tale of Sophie de Reval, a Russian woman who becomes obsessed with her brother's comrade, a sexually repressed Prussian soldier during the fall of the Czar at the beginning of WWI. When he rejects Sophie, she becomes a nymphomaniac, sleeping with every other soldier she can get her hands, eventually abandoning her house to join Commie forces upon learning that the object of her affection may very well be fixated on her brother. An interesting study of sexual politics, the film also features a memorable performance from Valeska Gert as Sophie's aunt, a dried out woman that appears to be more of a creature left under a large rock for years than a human.

Continuing with my catching up on neglected Hitchcock classics, I finally sat down to watch the stupendous To Catch a Thief (1955), starring one of my favorite male Hitchcock leads, Cary Grant. Grace Kelly, always breathtakingly beautiful, is given a meaty role here (she always annoyed me in Rear Window, 1954, pining after stick-in-the-mud Jimmy Stewart). An excellent tale of jewel thieves and romantic espionage, Jessie Royce Landis is also on hand with an exceptionally funny performance as Kelly's wealthy mother. See it if you love Hitchcock. See it if you love film.

I absolutely loved Kansas City Confidential, a vicious, sweaty little noir that gives Coleen Gray some actual screen time, and John Payne a likeable role (he was a little swallowed up by the red-headed sisters of Slightly Scarlet, 1956). A heist film beginning in Kansas City and ending up in Mexico, this film is a must see for lovers of noir, and a must own for me.

Having recently read Flannery O'Connor's brilliantly weird and wicked treatise on religious zealotry, Wise Blood, I finally got around to watching John Huston's faithful 1979 adaptation, which he perfectly (and I mean PERFECTLY) cast Brad Dourif as Hazel Motes, as the confused and disturbed bundle of contradiction, who returns home after serving time as a soldier, to start his own church, The Church of Christ Without Christ, itself a reflection of Motes' own religious contradictions. With pitch perfect support from the likes of Ned Beatty and Harry Dean Stanton, there's so many religious and cinematic thematics in this piece (of literature and film) to choke a horse. Truly, a film and a novel to talk about for hours, this is a masterpiece, difficult to describe and impossible to explain---and gloriously blasphemous.

Jean-Pierre Melville's epic WWII operatic Army of Shadows (1969) concerning the French resistance (unavailable in this country until 2006) just edges into my number one spot this week. With a running time of two and half hours, this is a an intense and nerve wracking film---and you hardly even see the Nazi's. Featuring excellent performances, gloriously beautiful cinematography and best of all, in my book, the presence of Simone Signoret, that results in a heartbreaking conclusion---I loved this movie. All of Melville's work is worthy of celebration, but if you haven't had the chance to sit down and watch Army of Shadows, please do so. You won't regret it---it's feels like a gangster film, but really, it's all about resisting the enemy.

Out of the Past: The Week in Film

Cess Pool Cinema:
1. Body of Evidence (1993) Dir. Uli Edel - US

The Banal, the Blah, the Banausic:
1. Management (2008) Dir. Stephen Belber - US
2. Audrey Rose (1977) Dir. Robert Wise - US
3. Castle Freak (1995) Dir. Stuart Gordon - US
4. The Greek Labyrinth (1993) Dir. Rafael Alcazar - Spain

Astounding Cinema:
5. The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) Dir. Alfred Hitchcock - US
4. Slightly Scarlet (1956) Dir. Allan Dwan - US
3. Blonde Ice (1948) Dir. Jack Bernhard - US
2. Puffball: The Devil's Eyeball (2007) Dir. Nicolas Roeg - UK
1. Bitter Moon (1992) Dir. Roman Polanski - UK/France

Theatrical Releases:
3. Death Bell (2008) Dir. Chang - South Korea 4/10
2. Amreeka (2009) Dir. Cherien Dabis - US 10/10
1. Where the Wild Things Are (2009) Dir. Spike Jonze - US 10/10

Rewatched Goodies:
1. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) Dir. Robert Aldrich - US

Oh, Madonna. I was much too young to see anything as tantalizingly titillating as Body Of Evidence (1993) upon its release, an almost blatant attempt to capitalize on the success of sex sleaze neo noir Basic Instinct (1992). Madonna headlines as a woman named Rebecca Carlson, who owns her own art museum. Now, I just have to include this description from Netflix: "Rebecca Carlson, a powerful, intelligent, successful, and breathtakingly beautiful woman (Madonna)...." Now, I'm typical to my gay nature in several ways, and one of those ways is generally enjoying Madonna's output as a musical, ermm, artist, for lack of a better word. Her portrayal as Ms. Carlson fits none of those slightly comical signifiers. In fact, I can't believe how awful I thought she looked, resembling a reptilian version of Courtney Love in several scenes where she gyrated, flung herself about, poured hot wax all over scary looking Willem Dafoe in a not very appealing sex scene, finger herself with spittle, and then monotonously make her way through the rest of the feature. A prototype, perhaps, for Elizabeth Berkley's characterization in Showgirls (1995), Body of Evidence is watered down sex propaganda masquerading in a noirish wolf's costume. Is it the worst thing I've ever seen? No, but it is most certainly not engaging. For a highlight, my favorite redhead Julianne Moore pops up in a few scenes as Dafoe's wife, and she tries her best not to be chewing the scenery. As you can imagine, Ms. Moore doesn't bring this film up very often. Oh yes, the plot! Madonna fucks her filthy rich boyfriend to death and the DA (Joe Mantegna) is convinced she did this on purpose, using her ripe, sexual body as a deadly weapon. Dafoe is her lawyer and Jurgen Prochnow pops up to add the Euro-trash element. And just when you thought you'd never hear from director Uli Edel again, keep in mind he directed The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008), nominated for Best Foreign Language Film last year.

You know, when I saw the preview for Management (2008), I didn't think it looked half bad. I don't utterly despise Jennifer Aniston, and I rather enjoy Steve Zahn. In a romantic comedy together? Where Zahn works for his parents (Margo Martindale and Fred Ward) in their roadside motel that Aniston, a saleswoman of corporate art, happens to stay one night? And Woody Harrelson as her ex, an ex-punk named Jango, attempting to woo her with security even though she feels nothing for him, yet the only tension we feel is her wishy-washy shilly shally between Harrelson and Zahn? Oh, and her hair looks AWFUL! The film does win an award for least aptly named feature of 2008. Beyond that, you'll forget what happens before the credits roll.

Audrey Rose (1977) was another of those horror films dealing with themes that drive Christians up the wall - reincarnation. Needless to say, this was on that unsaid banned list my parents had when I was a child, and I never had the opportunity to sneak watch it. It's too bad, it would have cured a sleepless night or two. Sporting one of my favorite directors (Robert Wise), Anthony Hopkins, and Marsha Mason (one of those 70's era vintage actresses with a plethora of sterling work a new generation of filmgoers seem ignorant about, see also Jill Clayburgh and Glenda Jackson) it seems Audrey Rose had the proper amount of talent to keep it afloat. The plot is basically a creepy Hopkins following around Mason's kid. Alarming Mason and her husband, he tells them that their daughter is the reincarnation of his own dead progeny that died 11 years ago. And right about then, the little girl starts going apeshit all the time as she dreams about burning to death in a car. While this sounds like it would be entertaining, it's not, which is certainly not helped by one of the homeliest little girls I've ever seen on screen, an actress named Susan Swift. Her career never really took off.

I am happy to see the resurgence of the very talented Stuart Gordon in recent years (what with the excellent Edmond, 2005, and Stuck, 2007) but I agree with some of the criticism that for many a film project he was attempting to relive the uber success of Re-animator (1985). With his 1995 feature, Castle Freak, I have to agree. Starring his two usual leads, Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton (both solid leads), they are given nothing to do but be completely unlikable couple in this direct to video feature. Years ago, Combs, an alcoholic, killed his son and blinded his daughter in an auto accident. Crampton has never forgiven him, seemingly only staying married to him to torture him. With blind daughter in tow, they follow Combs to Italy where he has just inherited a castle that contains an evil secret (if you can't guess, it's a creepy, deformed man). While filmed in an actual, old creepy castle, the film can't keep the tight amount of atmosphere, which Gordon tries to build but just can't hold in this film. It's not awful, and is at times entertaining, but it just can't rear its head above the mediocre mark.

Don't you love how a bit player in your feature film may, years later, resurrect interest in what would be your otherwise forgotten film? Rafael Alcazar's 1993 feature, The Greek Labyrinth has just that going for it in the guise of a young Penelope Cruz. The dull plot concerns a Spanish woman, eager to find her lover that abandoned her with whom she had resided in Paris. Hearing he's in Barcelona, she takes her gay confidante with her and hires a PI. The PI is our narrator (and Cruz is his daughter, with whom he has issues with due to the fact that she keeps sleeping with men older than him. Aye Caramba!) Well, her lover, the Greek, proves difficult to find. It seems, also, that this Greek was a bisexual heroin addict. That spells lots of trouble. However, this labyrinth ends up being a dead end. It's interesting to see the poster art, however, that certainly makes use of Cruz's name, which is prominently above all others.

This week happened to contain some EXCELLENT cinema, however, that I am very excited to talk about. Rounding out the list is Hitchcock's remake of his own film, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), which was originally a Peter Lorre vehicle (1934), and which I have yet to see. The remake stars James Stewart and Doris Day (whose signature song, 'Que Sera Sera," is from this film) as an All-American couple (don't they just OOZE that?) in Morocco, whose child is kidnapped when they accidentally become involved in an assassination plot of a political figure in London. Sounds a little busy? Well, it is, but it's entertaining because it's Hitchcock. Though not my favorite, it's a departure for the likes of Day and still worthy of appreciation.

Infamous for several reasons, but mostly because it's one of the only film noirs to be filmed in color (which kind of doesn't fit the definition of noir, but okay) is an excellent little golden oldie called Slightly Scarlet, a B production from 1956. The male lead is John Payne, a mob underling who is hired to find dirt on a chaste mayoral candidate before he's elected and ruins the crime syndicate. Well, Payne rather likes the candidate and kind of happens to back stab his mob boss, while falling in love with the mayor's secretary, June (Rhonda Fleming). But everything heats up when "dynamite dame" Dorothy, June's sister enters the picture. Dorothy has just been released from prison, apparently suffering from acute kleptomania, amongst other things, and is played vivaciously by Arlene Dahl (mother of Lorenzo Llamas). It's Dahl's performance that really gets my rocks off in Slightly Scarlet, which was filmed in Superscope, seemingly, to take advantage of both the actresses' fire-red hair (and when standing together look eerily similar). Fleming, by the way, was known as the Queen of Technicolor. The sisters play beautifully off each other as good girl vs. bad girl, but in the end, even this may not be so black and white. While the plot may meander a bit, the film does have the stamp of its author, none other than James M. Cain, the man who wrote three of the best film noirs ever made: Double Indemnity (1944), Mildred Pierce (1945), and The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946).

And another B noir from the 40's concerning a power hungry newspaper reporter who turns into a serial killer to meet her voracious money needs (think of an evil version of His Girl Friday, 1940) that also notably makes use of its femme fatale's hair color, is Blonde Ice (1948), which sports an excellent tagline: "Her veins were filled with ice. Her heart was filled with icicles." I love the noirs that center on the bad bitches (when they aren't just there to lure 'good men' astray) and Leslie Brooks playing Claire Cummings, is one bad bitch (I was strongly reminded of Nicole Kidman's performance in To Die For, 1995). While things might end badly for her, it's a fun little ride on the way and is one of the only features where the lovely Brooks gets the lead.

Universally panned upon its release was auteur Nicolas Roeg's first film feature in almost 11 years, Puffball: The Devil's Eyeball (2007). Though not an entirely incomprehensible film, it is difficult and at times, hard to decipher what the director is trying to say. I LOVED IT. Roeg's classics from the 70's represent such a cornerstone of cinematic culture they are virtually impenetrable to criticism. And films like Don't Look Now (1973) or Walkabout (1972) are difficult texts to ruminate about. The same goes for his last feature, starring Miranda Richardson (one of my favorite actresses), Kelly Reilly, Rita Tushingham and Donald Sutherland. The narrative concerns a young architect (Reilly) and her husband moving to the remote Irish countryside to fix up a cottage house they've purchased. However, when she becomes pregnant, her neighbors go a little apeshit and turn out to be, well, witches. Richardson has three girls, and in her 40's, is desperate for a boy child, so much so that she's convinced Reilly's bun in the oven was stolen from her. What ensues is a highly sexually charged plot of an impenetrable strangeness of the mundane. Shots of a penis and semen in the vagina, used condoms, rocks with holes, a penis shaped mushroom, all lend a foreboding atmosphere to the film. And that's exactly what I loved about it. A film should be like a good novel, a text you want to keep returning to, turning over in your head, remembering strange scenes later and perhaps they make more or even less sense. Puffball (named for the giant toad stools that look like big white pregnant tummies and colloquially known as the Devil's Eyeball) is just that film. It's confusing, weird, and creepy. Watching it made me reminisce about the oogy delight I felt reading Thomas Tryon's Harvest Home for the first time (which was subsequently made into a TV movie starring Bette Davis that didn't quite cut the mustard). Those not afraid of a challenge should see Puffball. My guess is that those critics that didn't understand this Roeg film most likely reserve their real opinions for his classic work as well so as not to appear sacrilegious to cinema. I truly hope that Roeg gets funding for his next project, an adaptation of the Martin Amis novel, Night Train, so far set to star Sigourney Weaver.

And this week's top pick is Roman Polanski's 1992 psychodrama comedy, Bitter Moon. The first half hour of the film made me intensely uncomfortable, mostly due to an incredibly creepy performance from a grotesque Peter Coyote (who always reminded me of Eric Roberts). A framed story set on a cruise ship, Hugh Grant and Kristen Scott Thomas star as a bland, rather estranged couple married for seven years and on their way to India as an anniversary present. Grant is attracted to a lusty woman on board, Emmanuelle Seigner (Polanski's wife, whom he scandalously married at a young age after meeting on the set of Frantic, 1988, and who always reminds me of the sexualized, European sex pot version of Brooke Shields) who is married to Coyote, a creepy old coot in a wheel chair. Coyote draws us into the framed narrative by telling Grant about his highly sexual and neurotic/abusive relationship with Seigner. Grant listens, titillated by the creepy, erotic, in depth sexual details from Coyote's narrative, which are more disturbing than any of the flashback imagery. Basically, their relationship was based only on intense sex, and when that peaked, Coyote became abusive and cruel, but the tables have eventually turned, and now, like a burst tumor, they're poison is leeching out to victims like Grant and Scott Thomas. Grant thinks he is falling in love with her. But a final 15 minutes of film will either drop your jaw, or at the very least, make you wrinkle your nose. Gross, complex, psychotic, I love Bitter Moon, a throwback to adult cinema that Polanski started out with when filming movies like Knife in the Water (1962), Repulsion (1965), Cul-De-Sac (1966), and my all time favorite, Death and the Maiden (1994).

Out of the Past: The Week in Film

Cess Pool Cinema:
N/A

The Banal, the Blah, the Banausic:
The Door in the Floor (2004) Dir. Tod Williams - US

Astounding Cinema:
7. Polyester (1981) Dir. John Waters - US
6. Blue Sunshine (1976) Dir. Jeff Lieberman - US
5. The Walker (2007) Dir. Paul Schrader - US
4. Torment (1944) Dir. Alf Sjoberg - Sweden
3. Young Torless (1966) Dir. Volker Schlondorff - West Germany
2. The Little Foxes (1941) Dir. William Wyler - US
1. Seconds (1966) Dir. John Frankenheimer - US


Theatrical Releases:
3. Zombieland (2009) Dir. Ruben Fleischer - US 8/10
2. A Serious Man (2009) Dir. Coen Bros. - US 8/10
1. Paranormal Activity (2007) Dir. Oren Peli - US 8/10


Though there's no official cess pool selections in this week's roundup, Tod William's sophomore feature came dangerously close to dipping its head in the septic tank. I've owned The Door in the Floor (2004) for a few years now, and sitting down to watch it left an unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach. I admit that I have a soft spot in my heart for the ever alluring (though not always on the mark) Kim Basinger, who is relatively unscathed in this film. Jeff Bridges plays her husband, a successful children's author. Several years prior, the couple lost their teenage sons in a terrible car accident and had another child to make up for their loss, a daughter, played by a member of the Fannings (this decade's Culkin clan). Currently, Basinger is depressed, Bridges has lost his driver's license and hires a young student as a driver and asks Basinger for a separation. (Bridges is also sleeping with Mimi Rogers, in a wasted role, though she does get to show off ALL of her finely toned body). It is at the point where Jon Foster, as the student, starts sleeping with Basinger, that the film becomes disagreeable. I am deciding to place most of the blame on Foster, only because he left me in disbelief due to his lazy performance in this year's turkey, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Though not a travesty, the picture, based on part of a John Irving novel, could have been a hell of a lot better. And Bijou Phillips appears as a babysitter, and no matter how polished she looks, she always looks anemic and white-trashy to me. Poor Bijou.

Ahh, John Waters, how I adore thee. Polyester is perhaps most famous for two things: Tab Hunter, the aged and infamous gay Hollywood heartthrob and Water's gimmick, Odorama, which was fun even if not every smell was quite distinct. The plot is typical Waters with Divine playing more of an abused haus frau here. Though I prefer Divine's bitchier performances in Pink Flamingos (1972) or Female Trouble (1974), Polyester is still worth a watch.

Though at moments a bit over the top, Jeff Lieberman's 1976 druggie horror film, Blue Sunshine, is overall, quite creepy. A group of Stanford alums that dropped a batch of acid in college all lose their hair and their minds a decade letter after they suffer some wicked flashbacks. Apparently the hair goes first, and God help those who tear off the wigs, as that seems to be when the horror really begins. Definitely worth a look, especially for those loving vintage 70's horror thrillers. Stars Zalman King.

It's been a Woody week for me, and I happened to catch Harrelson in one of his best performances to date in Paul Schrader's film of political intrigue, The Walker, in which Harrelson stars as an escort of sorts to political figurehead's wives and becomes involved in a murder scandal when he attempts to cover for his friend and fag-hag, Kristin Scott Thomas. Lauren Bacall, Lily Tomlin and Mary Beth Hurt round out Harrelson's group of squirrely confidantes that show their true colors as Harrelson's reputation becomes tainted. Best of all, Schrader gives us a gay protagonist without a plot that hinges on his orientation, composing a political thriller that goes down like a gulp of wine.

Though included in the Eclipse series of early Ingmar Bergman works, Torment was actually the first major screenplay penned by Bergman and was directed by then Swedish hot shot Alf Sjoberg (whose most enduring work seems to be an adaptation of Strindberg's Miss Julie, 1951). Torment (1944) tells the story of Jan-Erik, who is bullied and abused by a malignant and cruel Latin instructor, named Caligula by the student body. Taking refuge in a new girlfriend, Bertha, whom he meets drunk on the streets and whom he helps to sober up, Jan-Erik's reputation suffers, especially when it is revealed that Bertha and Caligula are connected in their own catastrophic way.

Another boarding school abuse story is Volker Schlondorff's beautiful film debut, Young Torless (1966), which is credited with jump starting the German New Wave. Schlondorff's brilliant film centers on Torless, a young student that stands by passively when two schoolmates ruthlessly torture and sadistically manipulate a weaker student. At first curious of how the student's inner turmoil would break, Torless becomes disgusted and tries to remove himself from the predicament. Of course, things eventually go too far. Set in 1900, the film most obviously is an eerie mirror for the Nazi party that would hold the world in its grip four decades later.

Boy, I love Bette when she's a bitch, and William Wyler gives her a plum role in his adaptation of Lillian Hellman's play, The Little Foxes (1941), which tells the story of the Hubbard clan, two ruthless, greedy brothers and their equally opportunistic sister. Davis dreams up a vicious plot to screw her brothers out of an investment deal, but needs the cooperation of her run down and weak willed husband, the always dependable Herbert Marshall. Meanwhile, Teresa Wright (in her screen debut) plays Davis' daughter, who we're meant to see teetering between being a mini version of her piranha like mom and her passive, feeble, alcoholic aunt. No one seems to be able to get what they want, but by the far, the best part is the infamous scene where Herbert Marshall is struggling for his life on the stairway while Bette Davis sits with a cruel and grotesque look on her face, willing him into death.

And this week's number one selection belongs to John Frankenheimer's odd cult classic from the 60's, Seconds, which stars Rock Hudson. A failure upon release, the film is quite lauded today, and many claims Hudson's best performance is in this picture, which concerns the tale of Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph), who takes an opportunity offered by an organization to stage his death and surgically alter him in order to let him relive his life by doing all the things he had meant to do. In other words, seconds. But Hamilton doesn't quite know what he's getting into, and as he becomes Tony Wilson (Rock Hudson), he realizes he wants to go back, throwing him into a horrific and grotesque situation. While some scenes, namely an extended orgy of grape stomping, could have been trimmed a little, Frankenheimer's clever little film is a creepy little sci-fi thriller, worthy of celebration.

Sunday, October 18th: Scary Bitches Presents Sisterly Love with "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?"

Well, here it is. At last I've managed to work a screening of my favorite camp classic, Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? (1962) into a movie night feature, as it perfectly fits into this year's Halloween theme of Scary Bitches---and you can't find any cinematic bitches that top the tour de force of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford in Aldrich's excellent masterpiece.

For those of you that haven't been blessed enough to see this picture, you'll be lucky to see it this Sunday. Light snacks will be provided (along with a thematically appropriate dish involving something served on a silver platter) but the night's highlight will involve an interactive game involving pancake makeup, blue eyeshadow and red lipstick. Upon arrival, guests will receive a sheet of instructions to adhere to during the film that will provide directions on applying the aforementioned items to one's face at integral moments of the film---and without the use of a mirror or any other reflective device. Yes, I have devised this from the Baby Jane drinking game, but since I want you all to enjoy the film and follow along, large amounts of alcohol, I feel will be unnecessary. I will also have available printed sheets of words to "I've Written a Letter to Daddy," so that we may all sing along. Please RSVP for showtime.

"Oh, Blanche? You know we've got rats in the cellar?"

Out of the Past: The Week in Film

Cess Pool Cinema:
1. Nadja (1994) Dir. Michael Almereyda - US

The Banal, the Blah, the Banausic:
1. Dead & Buried (1981) Dir. Gary Sherman - US

2. Deadly Friend (1986) Dir. Wes Craven - US

3. Sisters (2006) Dir. Douglas Buck - US

4. The Pink Panther (1963) Dir. Blake Edwards - UK

5. Body Double (1984) Dir. Brian De Palma - US

Astounding Cinema:

4. Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1941) Dir. Victor Fleming - US

3. Anna Lucasta (1958) Dir. Arnold Laven - US

2. Grace (2009) Dir. Paul Solet - US

1. Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1932) Dir. Rouben Mamoulian - US

Rewatched Goodies:

1. Inside (2007) Dir. Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury - France

If ever you have been curious to sit down and watch Nadja (1994), an unfortunate film produced by David Lynch and from director Michael Almereyda (who would go on to direct the modern adaptation of Hamlet, 2000, with Ethan Hawke) please be forewarned---you will be in for one of the most boring, painstaking, and atrociously constructed films I've had the misfortune of seeing. Starring Martin Donovan, Elina Lowensohn (no, it's not a Hal Hartley film) and Peter Fonda (looking like Janis Joplin, here), the film concerns our main character, a vampire named Nadja, played by Lowensohn. Nadja is supposedly evil to the core and has a strange, conflicted relationship with her twin vamp brother, who is cared for vaguely by a forlorn looking Suzy Amis. Fonda is Van Helsing, here a sort of hippie/buffoon that vaguely hunts vampires. Filmed in black and white with a low resolution looking like it was filmed on a hand held camera with a lens coated in vaseline, along with boring or irrational/disjointed dialogue make this film tedious with a capital T.

Quite a large selection of mediocre titles this week, beginning with an old slasher flick from the early 80's called Dead & Buried (1981). Now, I'm aware that this film has somewhat of a cult following, but it happens to be extremely dated, laden with plot holes, and, well, a little boring. Everyone that passes through the small coastal town of Potter's Bluff ends up being murdered and later mysteriously popping up alive again---as a new resident. Our protagonist, the town sheriff, must wade through the mystery only to come up against what must be ludicrously obvious.....

I was tempted to throw Deadly Friend (1986) into the Cess Pool, however, I then realized, it wasn't the most atrocious Wes Craven film (especially after seeing Shocker, 1989). Friend concerns a teenage boy, Paul (Matthew Laborteaux) and his mother moving next door to Samantha (Kristy Swanson) and her abusive father. Paul happens to have built an intelligent robot (not altogether dissimilar from Short Circuit, 1986---Oh, Wes) that takes a shotgun blast to the head from that unfortunate looking woman that goes by the name of Anne Ramsey. At around the same time, Kristy Swanson is killed by her father. Paul inserts his robot's (named BeeBee---lord knows WHY Craven decided to have a theme song made for the movie crafted after how the robot insists on shouting out it's alliterative name) into Swanson's body and Voila! You now have a certain amount of predictable possibilities and a dull film.

I was expecting to vehemently dislike Douglas Buck's revamp of one of my favorite De Palma films, Sisters (2006). I didn't detest Buck's previous work, a compilation of three of his festival circuit short films called Family Portraits: A Trilogy of America (2004), but definitely didn't think he had the potential to rework an actual excellent De Palma film. And I was right, Buck's doesn't live up to the 1974 film. But that's not to say it was a throwaway effort. The latter half of the film falls to the wayside of nonsense (and also happens to be the weaker part of De Palma's original), but it's salvaged, I think, by some intriguing casting. Stephen Rea as the doctor and Chloe Sevigny as the reporter are both excellent perfromers. Buck attempts to enter the narrative by connecting these two unconnected characters from the previous film. But Buck's greatest asset is the presence of Lou Doillon, the French model and half sister of Charlotte Gainsbourg (and daughter of director Jacques Doillon and Jane Birkin) as the film's centerpiece, one half of a pair of unbalanced Siamese twins. Please watch the original first---and if you're bored, take a look at Buck's treatment.

I'm sorry to say it---but I was extremely bored with Blake Edward's landmark film, The Pink Panther (1963). I know--everyone thinks Peter Sellers is brilliant. He is, sometimes. I just found the character of Clouseau to be a bumbling fool, which he is---but that hardly is something that generally keeps my attention. It's always amusing to see a young Robert Wagner, as well. The worst part of the film, I felt, were scenes involving Claudia Cardinale as an Indian princess. And the best scenes of the film were anything involving the marvelous Capucine (including one extended sequence, which I felt was the best, involving three men in Capucine's bed room). Maybe one day I'll dare to see another Panther film, or maybe those castigated remakes starring Steve Martin.

I realize that Brian De Palma's Body Double (1984) takes the heat for some major Hitchcockian ripoffs, but that's hardly the worst thing about the film. No, the worst thing about Body Double is the plot and the male leads. I can't remember the last time I watched a film wholly wishing through the entire thing that the protagonist would fall victim the worst cinematic death possible. A man named Craig Wasson plays our male lead, duped into a murder mystery involving voyeurism and Deborah Shelton, a woman, we're led to believe, that does a ludicrous striptease with her windows open, and up close, looks like a powdered mannequin suffering from a prematurely unwrapped nose job. There's not even any sense in poking about this plot, but worthy of mention is Melanie Griffith. I know, her mom was a Hitchcock blonde, hence her presence here. But still, who thought it would be believeable to cast Griffith as a famous porn star named Holly Body? Or who just wanted a good laugh, because that's what I got from it.

Rounding out this week's top selections is the first remake (considering you don't count the silent film with John Barrymore) of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941), in which 'Jekyll' is pronounced in the typical fashion. Beyond censorship obviously playing a hand in the film's somewhat watered down nature, the biggest detraction from this version is Spencer Tracy as our lead. I had to laugh because sitting down to watch it, I thought to myself that Tracy already looks kind of scary, rather like a fattened up Kirk Douglas or any of those men sufferin from the inflated looking jock-head typology. And when he's Mr. Hyde, he looks rather the same.....It's cute to see a young Lana Turner in the throwaway role as Jekyll's fiancee, however, it is a breathtaking Ingrid Bergman as the lower class barmaid, Ivy, tortured by Hyde, as a reason to see this film treatment. Also, one beautiful dream sequence where Jekyll/Hyde fantasizes being driven by two wild horses that morph into the heads of Turner and Bergman---good stuff.

Anna Lucasta (1958) is an interesting little film. A play that was meant to be a re hash of Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie (which was made into a wonderful film with Greta Garbo, her first speaking role), Lucasta was originally a 1949 film starring Paulette Goddard (hahaha---please see previous post concerning The Torch). The 1958 version features an all black cast, and, I must say, is quite a fabulous little picture, mostly for it's lead performance from Eartha Kitt. Also starring Sammy Davis Jr., this is Kitt's picture all the way, as a wayward woman due to her alcoholic father turning her out of the house.

There's a lot roiling under the surface of Paul Solet's feature debut of Grace, most obviously, of course, issues concerning motherhood and how, errr, transforming it can be. More intriguing than the evil dead baby that needs blood rather than milk (they are both bodily fluids) to survive, Grace straddles multiple dichotomies. Vegan vs. normal (lol), conservative vs. liberal, heterosexual vs. homosexual, and some creepy ideas about breastfeeding. Mix into this an excellent performance from Jordan Ladd and we have a cult classic on our hands. The more I think about Grace, the more I feel it deserves to have a critical essay written about it....

And the number one film this week goes to the 1932 film version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in which Jekyll rhymes with steeple. Frederic March won a deserved Oscar as our conflicted protagonist, and Miriam Hopkins is excellent in the flashier role as the tortured Ivy, here a cockney hussy. This version drips with oily sexuality and the transformation into Mr. Hyde is truly hideous when March becomes a hairy little sprightly beast that truly personifies demonic. If you haven't seen this film, get yourself a copy---it's a delight, through and through.

Out of the Past: The Week in Film

Cess Pool Cinema:
1. The Torch (1950) Dir. Emilio Fernandez - US


The Banal, the Blah, the Banausic:
1. Paris (2008) Dir. Cedric Klapisch - France
2. Body Snatchers (1993) Dir. Abel Ferrara - US


Astounding Cinema:
10. Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983) Dir. Nagisa Oshima - Japan
9. Fiend Without A Face (1958) Dir. Arthur Crabtree - UK
8. Hardcore (1979) Dir. Paul Schrader - US
7. Cleo From 5 to 7 (1962) Dir. Agnes Varda - France
6. From Beyond (1986) Dir. Stuart Gordon - US
5. Nathalie (2003) Dir. Anne Fontaine - France
4. The Comfort of Strangers (1991) Dir. Paul Schrader - US
3. Angel Face (1952) Dir. Otto Preminger - US
2. The Seventh Continent (1989) Dir. Michael Haneke - Austria
1. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) Dir. Luis Bunuel - France


Theatrical Releases:
3. Jennifer's Body (2009) Dir. Karyn Kusama - US 3/10
2. The Burning Plain (2008) Dir. Guillermo Arriaga - US 7/10
1. The Beaches of Agnes (2008) Dir. Agnes Varda - France 9/10


Well everyone, I have about a week and half worth of films for this post due to the interruption of the Toronto Film Festival, so I am sure I will be more brief than usual.



This week's cinema cess pool selection goes to an early 1950's American feature from Mexican director Emilio Fernandez. The threadbare plot concerns a revolutionary, Jose Juan Reyes (Pedro Armendariz) and his minions taking over a small Mexican town, where he falls in love with a ridiculous woman, Maria Dolores Penafiel, played by none other than Paulette Goddard, who was much too old for the role. But what the hell, slap some bronzer on that bitch and no one can tell we have a 40 year American old playing a 20 year old Mexican---it's all a wash. Not to mention Goddard's particularily and transcendentally atrocious acting, including a completely unbelievable romance with Armendariz. Myself a huge fan of so bad it's good cinema, I advise this floppy drivel to be avoided at all costs, unless you want to pretend Goddard is a viperous drag queen and don't mind wasting 90 minutes of precious life, then have at it.


As for this week's mediocre selections, there are two entries from somewhat celebrated, capable directors. Abel Ferrara has directed his share of clunkers (including ill received vehicles with Madonna like Dangerous Game, 1993 or New Rose Hotel, 1998 with Asia Argento) but he's also the man behind Bad Lieutenant (1992) and King of New York (1990). And so, with eager anticipation I finally sat down for Ferrara's treatment of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which Ferrara chose to title Body Snatchers. Except that, it's the third film version of this story. And somehow, the fourth, ill conceived version (The Invasion, 2007, with Nicole Kidman) is better than Ferrara's. Poor Gabrielle Anwar is kind of the film's lead, and she's more like a doe caught in the headlights. Terry Kinney, with some Nicolas Cage locks, is even more bafflingly cast as her father. In fact, the only nugget of interest in Ferrara's treatment is the presence of Meg Tilly (who hasn't acted since 1995) and the controversy over whether or not it was a body double in her full on nude scene. I like Meg Tilly, I'll always love Agnes of God (1985). And then there's Forest Whitaker in two scenes, both horrendous and worthy of the cutting room floor. Overall, a dull rehash, especially considering it sports a screen story credit from Larry Cohen and Stuart Gordon helped write the screenplay.


The next mediocre selection is from Cedric Klapisch, the man behind the excellent Family Resemblances (or Un Air de Famille, 1996) and the international success of L'auberge Espagnole (2002) and its sequel, Russian Dolls (2005), which would turn Romain Duris into a star. But his latest effort, Paris, is sentimental drivel to the extreme. Examining strange intersections between the fluffy lives of a few Parisians, Romain Duris returns as a (heterosexual) dancer who finds out he has a limited amount of time to live due to a fatal heart condition. His sister (Juliette Binoche, who's always a joy to watch, even in this clunker) moves in with her kids to take care of him. One completely awful line uttered by Duris is his response to his sister's question about what he does all day alone in the apartment. "Watch other people live. Wonder who they are, where they go? They become heroes in my little stories." Ugggh. What awful shit. So, then we're forced to watch all these random Parisians---which aren't terribly bad or terribly interesting until we get to a horrendous subplot involving Fabrice Luchini (the despicably ugly and pickled actor/husband of director Anne Fontaine, who disgusted me with his sexual shenanigans with Louise Bourgoin in Fontaine's The Girl From Monaco, 2008) as a professor who text message stalks and beds his student, the ravishing Melanie Laurent (Inglourious Basterds, 2009). I didn't believe a minute of it--what an old, icky man fantasy. The film came across as almost offensively contrived. At one moment, one of Binoche's kids asks, "Why are you telling us all this?" I wished to ask the same of the filmmaker.


Well, we have a lot of astounding selections in this week's roundup.

Finally, I was again impressed with one of auteur Nagisa Oshima's more "minor works" (I have yet to see Empire of Passion, 1978 or In the Realm of the Senses, 1976). One of Oshima's two features from the 1980's, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983) stars David Bowie as a POW in the early 1940's. Moving and heavy, the film is quite good and seemingly realistic, with several memorable moments, including Bowie being buried up to the neck in sand. The only disconcerting moments of the film happened between Japansese characters that only spoke their language while we were not privy to subtitles, lending an isolated, POW point of view, that worked for the narrative and sometimes against it.


Oh, those crazy Brits. Genre entry Fiend Without a Face (1958) is quite the entertaining little jaunt---if you can make it through the B-trappings of silly acting, stale plotting, and overall hamminess to get to the "special effects" pay off when the beastly creatures created by telekinesis and energized by a militaty radioactive power plant become visible to the human eye, which resemble large brains that crawl along with the use of a spinal cord, that somehow, also permits them to fly short distances. I am curious to get a copy of previous works by Arthur Crabtree, who also directed Madonna of the Seven Moons (1945) and Death Over My Shoulder (1958). If you enjoyed the original The Blob (1958), you'll love Fiend Without a Face.


After recently rewatching Paul Schrader's strange but interesting remake of Cat People (1982), I realized there were a ton of old films helmed by Schrader that I'd never taken the time to see. Hence, he is responsible for two entries on this week's 'best of' list. The lower on the list is an excellent little gritty film called Hardcore (1979), which stars George C. Scott as a midwestern Calvinist in Grand Rapids, Michigan, whose teenage daughter runs away into the porn pits of LA while on a Calvinist retreat. A gritty story (that perhaps has too happy of an ending), this beats the shit out of re-tread material like 8MM (1999), which borrows heavily from Schrader's film. Rumor has it that George C. Scott did not get along with Schrader, at one point only agreeing to get out of his trailer after making Schrader promise he would never direct a film again. Peter Boyle costars as an oily, seedy LA private dick, and Season Hubley (once the wife of Kurt Russell) brightens the dialogue as a prostitute Scott hires to help find his kid. The creepiest rumors tend to circulate around Ilah Davis, who plays Scott's daughter, who may or may have not been actually involved in the sex trade herself, until after this film, when she joined a hippie cult called Rainbow Family. Yeah.


After catching Agnes Varda's excellent new film, The Beaches of Agnes, a sort of documentary/memoir, I made an effort to sit down and begin watching her films that I've owned forever. Starting with Cleo From 5 to 7, which focuses on French singer, Cleo (Corinne Marchand), and two hours of her life during which she's been waiting to find out the results of a medical examination that may reveal she has cancer. Rather than be as heartbreaking as it sounds, the film is instead, realistic, and therefore, even more powerful as it shows the spoiled and naieve young star as she drifts through several episodes during her day. Convinced that as long she stays pretty she won't die, she becomes more and more terrified, forcing her to seek solace with her friend, a nude model, and eventually we find her bonding with a soldier in a park, himself about to be deployed in the war against the Algerians. Lyrical and epidsodic, Agnes Varda is indeed vintage New Wave.


While it may not be as good as Stuart Gordon's previous work which also starred Jeffrey Combs (Reanimator, 1985), From Beyond (1986) may perhaps be loosely plotted, but it's an entertaining grand guginol adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft. Revolving around a genius scientist, Dr. Edward Pretorious (an homage to The Bride of Frankenstein, 1935) who creates a resonator that stimulates the pineal gland which also happens to bring wicked creatures from the 4th dimension into our own. His head bitten off by one of these creatures, his assistant, played by Jeffrey Combs is arrested. A young doctor is called in for her opinion (a fresh faced and entertaining Barbara Crampton) who decides that Combs should be released to her so she can duplicate the experiment and find out what happened. Though the course of events are utterly unbelievable, the gross out factor is actually quite surprising. It turns out that when stimulated too long, the pineal gland takes on a life of it's own and expands, shooting a phallus-like tendril out through the center of your forehead (apparently Descartes called the pineal the third eye). Creepy and disgusting, From Beyond is worth the watch.

And at long last sitting down to watch Anne Fontaine's Nathalie... (2003) (which, if you've been following my blog, was remade as Chloe, 2009, by Canadian auteur Atom Egoyan), I was impressed by each screen treatment for different reasons. The remake remains almost the same for the first 3/4 of each film, but both differ more than enough in strangely interesting ways. There's nothing inherently wrong with Fontaine's film, which concerns a gynecoligist (the wonderful and radiantly beautiful Fanny Ardant) who confirms that her husband (Gerard Depardieu) is cheating on her after he misses a surprise birthday party she throws for him. Listening to his voicemail, Ardant discovers that he has cheated on her a few times, but as he says, these episodes meant nothing. Hurt and confused, she hires a prostitute from a sex club to seduce her husband, to catch him in an intense affair. Enter Nathalie, played wonderfully by a psychotic and sexy Emmanuelle Beart---it is here where Nathalie holds the greatest advanatge over Chloe---Beart is an excellent actress and her counterpart in the remake is played by Amanda Seyfried, who is much too young, and altogether unconvincing. The husband, played by Liam Neeson in Chloe, is rather a non sequitor in both cases. But it is the dark, and more frank sexual tension that develops between the women that gives Chloe an advantage--Fontaine's film is a bit more ambiguous, which, depending on how you look at it, might just reduce the Nathalie character into a headcase when really, still waters run deep. Both Fanny Ardant and Julianne Moore, respectively, are reason enough to see either picture.

Paul Schrader's other selection is the strange and perverse The Comfort of Strangers (1991), a creepy, little picture in the tradition of classic Euro-art-house creep fests that either irritate you with subtlety or get lodged under your skin. Strangers is set in Venice, which is quite appropriate for its tone and distinct foreboding atmosphere. It is no wonder that the film seemed to channel Visconti's Death In Venice (1971). Focusing on a young couple played by Rupert Everett and Natasha Richardson that are on vacation, it seems, to repair their crumbling relationship (he hates kids, she has two from a previous relationship), weirdness takes center stage when they run into the last man you'd want to see in the shadowy crevices of Venice -- Christopher Walken. Taking them under his wing, Walken spouts strange, and at first, vaguely sexual stories about his life growing up with a tyrannical father. Eventually ensnaring the couple into visiting his home, we meet Walken's even more off-center wife, played delightfully by Helen Mirren. You can predict something delightfully creepy is going to happen, but you just don't know what---a strange little psycho-sexual exercise, this sordid little treat is definitely worth discussion.

Expert filmmaker Otto Preminger's film noir masterpiece, Angel Face (1952) gets third place this week, starring Robert Mitchum as a paramedic who falls for femme fatale Jean Simmons on an emergency call concerning her rich stepmother. Quitting his paramedic gig (and his nurse girlfriend) to take a job as the chauffeur for Simmons' stepmom, he discovers that Simmons had more in mind than just having him drive her around. What plays like your standard noir takes a jolting turn towards the end that had me shaking my head at this cold hearted broad.

Michael Haneke's first film feature rounds out the number two slot, with The Seventh Continent (1989), a reference to Australia, and several other things, once you start to think about it. It's several frames into the film before we discover who has been talking, or conversing, as Haneke at first chooses to focus on the character's hands, feet, and mundane activities a middle class Austrian family engages in. The effect is indeed alienating, clueing us into perhaps how this family feels as they suddenly decide to pack up and leave Austria in order to emigrate to Australia, as they tell employers and parents, when instead they commit familial suicide after destroying their home. Definitely difficult to get into, and understand, but the film is about the emotional deadness of contemporary society---why should we feel fuzzy or sad about the eventual outcome? It merely seems inevitable. And therefore, disturbing and brilliant.

And the number one spot goes to master filmmaker Luis Bunuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), which, as the plot outlines tells us, is a quite plotless film about six middle class people and their continually interrupted attempts to sit down and eat together, which results in a the latter half of the film being mostly a continuum of unrelated dreams of these people as their frustatration and anxieties come to the fore. Much like his next film, The Phantom of Liberty (1974), Bunuel is critiquing, as always, social hypocrisies, focusing a great deal on religion, and social politics (and here one of the characters, played by Fernando Rey, is an Ambassador from Spain, I believe). Jean-Pierre Cassel and Paul Frankeuer round out the men, while the three actresses are some of my favorite French actresses of all time, including Bulle Ogier, Stephane Audran, and Delphine Seyrig (though Ogier gets the funniest role as the alcoholic sister of Seyrig). A definite must see (and must own on my part!), there just isn't quite anything like sitting down to watch a Bunuel feature.