Movies You Watched Today: Return Of The Thread (Part 1)

[MintyJuffowup]

I’ve recently returned to a periodic interest of mine: balancing a list of films from around the world in an attempt to create something “representative” of international voices. By its nature, the practice is reductive and arbitrary but it helps push me to see things that wouldn’t normally be on my radar. I’ve zeroed in on 1992, the year of my birth, to test things out and already I’m running into problems. Mainly, films outside of the Euro-American hegemony are very often out of print, save those from East Asia.

My current list is populated by five films: Rebels of the Neon God, Fishing with John, Lessons of Darkness, Malcolm X, and Porco Rosso. If you have the slightest urge to recommend something to me, please do! I have a lot of blind spots.

Anyways, the movie I watched today is Lessons of Darkness. Werner Herzog uses cranes and helicopters to make the Kuwaiti oil fires strange and operatic. Going into it, I thought it was going to be a truthful, if artful, depiction of the crisis. I was wrong. Herzog considers the film a piece of science fiction.

With so many shots coming from the point of view of a helicopter, the ecological horror looks almost beautiful. The lakes of oil reflect the sky and the brilliant geysers of fire contrast aesthetically with the black smoke. A few times, the camera will come down to earth to talk to local Kuwaitis. Their stories are so horrific that they can hardly speak. In these moments, I wanted to go back to the comfort and safety of flight. That extreme is so outside of what I could expect for myself that it feels truly alien. I think I understand what Herzog means by science fiction.

The largest twist of reality is a line that is narrated over firefighters reigniting an oil well. They reignite wells if a plan is unsuccessful so that gas doesn’t build up, but Herzog lies,

What are they up to? Are they going to rekindle the blaze? Is life without fire become unbearable for them?.. Others, seized by madness, follow suit. Now they are content. Now there is something to extinguish again.

I immediately thought about the American led coalition and the wars in Western Asia that are still ongoing. I’m not sure what else there is to say about that.

Sorry, for the long post with no pictures. I wrote it to avoid writing a post for school.

[HoboSupportAct]

Saint Maud is 85 minutes of lean, economical born-again religious insanity that was well worth the frustration that it was made nearly two years ago

[vodselbt]

i was wondering about this. the premise can easily be pretty mediocre, but everything i saw about this one made it at least seem kind of sleek.

[GherkinForce]

I saw Earwig and the Witch today. I actually enjoyed it a lot more than I expected given the thrashing it’s getting in reviews. It’s definitely a lesser Ghibli film though, and probably the lightest on plot that the studio has produced. The ‘witches in a 70s rock band’ backstory was kinda cool.

The resolution of the story feels pretty rushed, and end pretty abruptly on what feels like a cliffhanger for a sequel that’ll never happen. Apparently the book it’s based on feels unfinished as well so I guess maybe it’s just a very faithful adaptation?

Animation-wise it’s kinda subpar. The backgrounds look as nice as any other Ghibli but the characters all look like plastic models. That plus being set in Britain reminded me of Postman Pat and the like.

---

I’ve also been re-watching the Stray Cat Rock series, I’d completely forgotten about Bunjaku Han’s character in Machine Animal who mostly just sits silently in her wheelchair listening to supervillain music

[Rudie]

Loved the post. Like it more than the picture heavy posts!

[MintyJuffowup]

Thank you. I tend to feel a bit vain when i write this much so it’s nice to hear when people like it.

[u_u]

Netflix is adding a bunch of Taiwanese content lately, which has been great. We are watching a TV drama from a couple years back that I honestly don’t think I can recommend to anyone without a serious interest in the history of Taiwan, because it does all those corny things Chinese-language tv shows do that are really hard to get into. Episodes are over an hour long, and often end in the middle of a scene, the acting is wildly uneven, everything looks … slightly cheap (though some good scenery / sets in this one).

It’s actually the first one I’ve committed to watching all of, and I’ve seen enough of it to get past the aesthetic hurdles and just get hooked on the story. The English title is (hilariously ) Le Grande Chaumiere Violette.

But that’s not why I wanted to make this post - I do actually want to recommend something marginally more accessible, the movie Dear Ex that also just got added.

The premise is a middle aged college professor dies, and leaves his insurance money to his much younger male lover instead of his wife and son. This is weirdly a very popular plot in Taiwan lately (minus the gay angle, I guess), as another movie just came out (Little Big Women) that I haven’t seen yet - it looks more like a typical melodrama and in this one the widow is a grandmother and her husband’s affair was with a woman. Anyway I’m recommend Dear Ex mainly for the performance of the lead actress (Who, coincidentally, is also in Little Big Women) Ying-Hsuan Hsieh, who gives one of the most energetic and occasionally terrifying-but-still-sympathetic performances I’ve seen in years.

She is kind of a manic helicopter parent, and is basically in the midst of a nervous breakdown for the entire movie. I honestly think the script goes a little over the top in making her the vengeful betrayed spouse in ways that feel misogynistic at times, especially in the beginning, but the story is also told from the perspective of her extremely angsty and confused teenage son, so I think the worst parts are also filtered through this “moms just don’t understand” lens that I don’t think we are supposed to be entirely empathetic to.

The ending wraps things up a little too neatly, and there are some kind of corny parts about it, but I really think it’s worth watching just to see this actress come out of nowhere to chew scenery like her life depended on it

[isfet]

not sure if Ghibli film talk belongs here or in cartoons, but i watched that new Ghibli film Earwig and the Witch last night and uh…hmmm.

i am not a Ghibli superfan - what i’ve seen, i’ve liked, but i’ve mostly only seen the major stuff. i’d always heard Goro’s stuff wasn’t quite up to snuff or was just ok at best and i feel like this movie sort of solidified that for me. first, the characters feel really disjointed and inconsistent, as if they’re made up of elements of archetypes without internal consistency.

Aya/Erica/Earwig/the main girl can be likeable, but her main motivation seems to be that she likes to manipulate people, which…ok. the other characters get vaguely developed, but only a little bit through flashbacks. we don’t really get what their motivations are or why they’ve created the scenario that we, the audience, find ourselves in. we’re given hints, and maybe that is the point, but the hints aren’t solid or interesting enough to explain any of what is happening in the film.

and then it just sort of ends. not very much happens in this movie; you just sort of exist in its world for a little while, and aspects of it are nice, but it feels kind of hollow.

more spoilery stuff

Summary

also i think the main song in the film kind of sucks and also is weirdly anachronistic. the conceit of a witches forming a psych rock band in the 60s or whenever is a fun idea, but the music is competent at best and also sounds basically nothing like music from that era. i just sort of feel like if you’re going make music do some heavy lifting in your movie, it has be uhhhh very good.

Aya is kept as a slave because…why? because Bella is mad at Aya’s mom for leaving? and what is Mandrake’s deal? is he Aya’s dad? just Aya’s mom’s boyfriend from back in the day and she had a baby with someone else? why won’t they tell her that they know who she is and who her mother is?

i think Mandrake is probably one of the more interesting characters, but even he isn’t totally pulled off well. a paternal figure is who is hypersensitive and unpredictably temperamental is maybe a fun trope for people who didn’t grow up with a dad like that, but mostly it feels like unpleasant flashbacks to my childhood lol.

in theory the idea that a mom leaves a band and a coven and then years later hits up her bandmates like “hey can you go pick up my kid from that orphanage” is kind of funny and is the sort of thing that people in a band like that would do, but it doesn’t really explain any of the things that we see happening in the film.

overall the film just seems to be missing a lot of crucial details in its plot to make it more interesting and at its best it is merely pleasant. it feels as though the movie is a set up to something else that we will never see, almost like the movie should have been a Netflix series or something like that.

visually, i don’t think it looks as bad as some critics apparently do. at times it feels like they are maybe trying to go for the look of that Peanuts movie i never saw (some of the character expressions remind me of peanuts, anyway). it’s weirdly cartoony in ways i usually don’t think of Ghibli films as being. feels like maybe a limitation of their skill with the medium or with the budget?

the set design, though, is really nice. i’d say the world they create in the film is much more visually intricate and interesting than what i’ve seen in, say, a Pixar film. so, there’s that.

overall, weird movie. watch it if you want, i guess!

[u_u]

@isfet

that Peanuts movie i never saw

For some reason before reading this post something entirely unrelated reminded me of this last night, and I spent like 2 hours reading random trivia about Charles Shultz and watching supercuts of the movie made by extremely inscrutable YouTube accounts, major forum synergy moment. I do think the Peanuts movie looks kind of cool, I’m always sad there aren’t more visually interesting CGI movies out there

In another forum hive mind synergy moment my Peanuts Experience last night also reminded me of something else I wanted to post about in another thread so I’m going to go do that now. Follow along to the ongoing discussion of browser tabs as the adventure continues

[Father.Torque]

My kids really liked the CG Peanuts movie so that’s a success I guess

[u_u]

they weren’t righteously indignant about seeing the face of the little red haired girl?

[vodselbt]

Watched Lady in a Cage again.

what if this ghost was in your house but he wasn’t alone because Brian Chippendale from Lightning Bolt was with him, and some other ghosts too

[AutomaticTiger]

This isn’t the first time, Shultz wrote a few specials with her making an on-screen appearance too:

Little Red-Haired Girl

[MintyJuffowup]

Continuing my journey through 1992, I watched El Mariachi. Apparently the film cost $7,000 to produce which would be about $13,000 today. I’m a big fan of DIY works because they often make me think, “hey, I could do that.” I mean, I don’t have $13,000 but maybe I’m charming enough to acquire a loan so I can make my genre riff punctuated by explosive bullet wounds.
I was really on board at the start of the film. The movie is at its best when it can stretch its legs out and doesn’t have to hurry things along with action. There’s a couple of charming little strokes of color like the coconut El Mariachi starts drinking when he arrives in town or the one man mariachi band. These colors start to fade as the movie passes the halfway point and the action starts hurrying things along.
For such an inexpensive film, it sure has a lot of great casting. Just look at these faces. They’re great.

[VastleCania]

@MintyJuffowup

the one man mariachi band

non video game things i think about a lot. that zoom is great

[MintyJuffowup]

That zoom and the way the film is sped up when the hotel manager phones the goons are my favorite cheap flourishes.

[Felix]

heads up that there’s a 4k Millennium Actress and Castle of Cagliostro floating around now

I love when they make bullshit sequels to old properties lately because it always means someone pays for a 4k transfer

[thecatamites]

watched killer klowns from outer space (1988), enjoyed it but especially the early sections when it felt like it hadn’t solidified into “a movie” yet and just had the vibe of a meandering directionless sketch comedy that suddenly veered at random into odd moments of tonal blankness or horror

camera just kind of statically watching these character actors wander around talking to themselves and chewing scenery, as though in a daze, tedium interrupted by weird moments of intensity like when the old farmer screams “i’ll TEAR THIS PLACE APART with my BARE HANDS”
and then a clown appears and shoots him with a ray, no music, shot of leering drooping latex face before it ends abruptly and cuts to a different group of people running around.

characters wandering through peewee’s playhouse cartoon pomo architecture in anxious fear. “this is that new-wave, european-style circus.” there’s a good later scene where three people have to slowly shuffle through a big pile of balloons while ominous organ chords play.

everyone talks about the sexy female gremlin from gremlins 2 but how come nobody brings up the sexy female klowns from this movie

a strangely intense scene of the bad cop who sounds sort of like rodney dangerfield handcuffing one of the killer klowns to drag into a cell and brutalise. there’s an earlier scene where he bullies some punk rockers, and one of them has a giant safety pin stuck through his coat with a plastic skeleton dangling off it.

every time a male member of the cast needs to get around a car they either slide over the hood or do a kind of hip swing around one of the headlights.

end credits song lyrics rhyme “rubber nose on a painted face” with “genocide to the human race”

the target audience for OK Soda makes a brief appearance right at the start

[Father.Torque]

Rodriguez’s entire career is coasting downhill on goodwill potential energy built up by El Mariachi. He’s never come close to equalling it

[MintyJuffowup]

That’s a bummer because I hoped Desperado was going to be a somewhat successful transition into a higher budget.