Cross the Line

Cross the Line

No matarás

Director – David Victori

Writers – Jordi Vallejo, David Victori, Clara Viola

Stars – Mario Casas, Milena Smit, Elisabeth Larena

 

At online Grimmfest Easter.

 

Mild-Mannered people-pleaser Dani (Mario Casas) has devoted his recent life to caring for his father, but now it’s time to move on and start anew. And he’s on the verge when he crosses paths with the kind of domineering good time girl that you know is going to be trouble. The film makes exceptional use of music as it goes from dad’s unremarkable dying room to neon nightmare as Dani finds that straying from his caution only gets him deeper and deeper into trouble and desperation.

 

Victori is obviously going for something more poignant here with the title (online translator says the original Spanish translate as “You will not Kill”?), but the fun is following how things, pretty realistically, spiral out of control, forcing increasingly desperate and extreme reactions. Like ‘Victoria’, there’s a sense of playing out in real-time across the city, the handheld camera staying close to the protagonist– in this case, across Barcelona. It won’t win any friends with portraying the threat as a wild side female, in noir style or a nineties “yuppie peril” scenario, but Smit’s performance is compelling. However, it’s Casas’ portrayal of a man being altered for life by one night, the toll taken showing increasingly on his face, that really grounds the film. Perhaps the film ultimately overreaches for sadness rather than closure, but it’s a vivid and entertaining thriller with lots of panache.

linktree Buck

GRIMMFEST digital: 'Midnight', 'Faceless'. 'We're all going to the World's Fair', 'The Free Fall'. 'The 3rd Day'

Midnight

Writer & Director - Oh-Seung Kwon

Stars – Wi Ha-Joon, Park Hoon, Ki-joo Jin

2021, South Korea

 

A hearing-impaired daughter and mother get mixed up with a devious serial killer. Well, it should be profoundly deaf, because the sound design makes it clear they can’t hear a thing. This allows sound monitors of various kinds all over the place (they must have spent all their money on them?) which aren’t quite used inventively enough. However, the portrayal of Kyung Mi (Jun Ki-joo) is mostly sympathetic although her hearing impairment is, of course, just a conceit to rack up tension and misunderstanding. It’s no mistake that the killer’s ability to talk himself out of situations is the counterpoint to her desperation to be understood; he represents the constant threat of the verbose on her impairment. Wi Ha-Joon makes for a handsome and slick killer

 

It pummels along, but it relies on everyone being a super-runner and the fumbling and stupidity of police and a little convenience-contrivance to keep things going. And going. Perhaps it’s twenty minutes too long because all the way through, the balance swings towards suspense and then rolling your eyes or shouting at characters (you may do this from the first scene) and it’s a little tiresome come the last act (No! Don’t turn your back on the killer! etc). There is a little of the debate about citizens responsibility to one another, a fine melee in a police station and a fine solution to stop him talking his way out all the time.

Faceless

Director - Marcel Sarmiento

Writers - Ed Dougherty, Marcel Sarmiento, Freddie Villacci

2021, USA

Stars - Brendan Sexton III, Alex Essoe, Terry Serpico

 

A small time trouble-maker wakes up with someone's else's face and a case of amnesia: uncovering the mystery ensues. Shadowy alleys and bars and murkier medical experiments are all there. Sexton III puts in a vulnerable performance as he experiences existential angst and identity crises, trying to piece together what happened.

 

A film of face trauma and a plot that is both conspiracy and film noir convolution. Uncomfortable throughout for the constant face abuse, packed full of too many questions (Sarmiento says this himself, but one shouldn’t fault a little over-ambition) but ultimately satisfying for the body horror and plotting in a slightly confused and confusing noir manner.

 

 

 

We’re All Going to the World’s Fair

Writer & director - Jane Schoenbrun

2021, USA

Stars - Anna Cobb, Holly Anne Frink, Michael J Rogers

 

With another remarkable young performance from Anna Cobb, this is something like ‘Eighth Grade’ and ‘Wild Tigers I Have Known’ for horror girls. Friendless video teen Casey (Cobb) plays The World’s Fair, an internet horror game that is meant to possess you. The vibe is American slacker suburbia - but more shoegaze ‘Wild Tigers’ than the metal of ‘Gummo’ – with the protagonist creating her own world online, although she may be talking to no one. But then she is contacted by the dubious MJR, and afterwards she becomes increasingly unstable.

 

The pace is slow and immersive, utilising long takes and a modern teen’s ease with being on camera. Details like the colourful interior of Casey’s room are vivid and diegetic sound of rain on the roof and traffic passing becoming increasingly create unsettling ambience. It creates a convincing depiction of experience through online videos (expect your screen to buffer frequently) but, like ‘Eighth Grade’, it sides with the kids in that they know exactly how to navigate the artificial and performative world online. Empathetic and weirdly creepy as we seem to be watching a girl’s loneliness turn to mental instability, it maintains its elusiveness to the very end. A character study of teenage malaise and escapism.

 

 

The Free Fall

Director - Adam Stilwell

Writer - Kent Harper

Stars - Andrea Londo, Shawn Ashmore, Jane Badler

 

Slick but prosaic with obvious scares and gaslighting, starts all Gothic ‘Rebecca’ before a touch of ‘The Shining’ and ‘The Conjuring’ universe and ‘The Exorcist’. Possibly camp fun? It didn’t strike me the way Grimmfest’s synopsis did as “a chilling commentary on the seductiveness of Hollywood's dreams of dark romance.”

 

On the 3rd Day  -  Al Tercer Día

Director - Daniel de la Vega

Writers - Alberto Fasce, Gonzalo Ventura

2021, Argentina

Stars - Mariana Anghileri, Arturo Bonín, Diego Cremonesi

 

Like de la Vega’s previous ‘The White Coffin’, this too features a woman running around in the middle of something supernatural with a child’s life at stake. The influences and homages to Seventies films are evident (red and yellow raincoats, anyone?), but de la Vega makes the somewhat choppy pacing and nightmare logic of giallo into a pell-mell ride through tropes and mystery. There’s nothing you wouldn’t guess here, but de la Vega’s style always feels like it can’t stop to be obvious, always throwing into hints of something else that implies it could go off in any direction (the silhouette of a man wielding a crowbar in front of a house is straight out of a slasher, for example). This makes for a fun and artful ride through genre, heading for a classic last image before the credits. But there’s also more after the scrapbook credits.

 

Normally film stills in credits and post-credit codas aren’t something I like, but there is something “everything in!” about da la Vega’s style that I go even with this.

 

And the very entertaining 'Night Drive' also featured in Grimmfest today.

I Care A Lot

Writer & director: J Blakeson

2020, UK-USA

Starts with one of those narrations where the protagonist-villain is spouting that sociopathic bullshit about people being one of two types, predators or victims. Yeah. She’s a “shark”. But it’s unnecessary, as so many narrations are, because we can see immediately what kind of woman Marla Grayson (Rosamand Pike is). She’s scamming the legal system into putting elderly people into her care homes, enabling her to fleece them of their homes and money.

But then she plays her trick on the wrong old timer (a game but somewhat side-lined Dianne Wiest), whose son (a constantly stewing Peter Dinklage) is also a reprehensible gangland criminal. Mark Kermode says that the film plays with allegiances, but never once did I root for Grayson. What we are left with is knowing that, whatever happens, the bad guys will win. And they do.

The stipulation that a fiction’s protagonist should be “likeable” is, of course, absurd. What they must be is interesting and even, you know, complex. ‘I Care a Lot’ truly pushes that to its limit, because there really isn’t anyone to root for. Of course, it helps that there’s Rosamind Pike whose superficial smile is the stuff of nightmares, giving a sexy authority to her moral vacuity. And there’s Peter Dinklage, where you can feel the gears grinding beneath the surface. Both are brilliant turns. But what you need is an interesting plot if are at odds with the characters, dialogue and twists and turns, and the film has that enough. But what we also have is a plot that hinges upon henchmen not checking their victim has drowned and being unaware that they are being obviously tailed all night, it seems.

But the fact that ‘I Care a Lot’ doesn’t ask for your empathy for its protagonists no doubt contributes to the strength of negative reactions on Amazon commets: “Stupid movie” and “Waste of talent”, that kind of thing. But ‘I Care a Lot’ isn’t that, of course: Blakeson does what he sets out to do, and it’s stylish, well written and paced and always interesting. It’s certainly divisive and frutsrating. The second half moves into a thriller scenario and there is also a hint of the heightened reality here, so perhaps the bleakness and cruelty obscures the playfulness. It feels like it’s in the same semi-absurdist world as, say, Soderberg’s ‘Unsane’. For example, the credibility of Grayson’s scam might be an issue, if you know how courtrooms work, etc. It’s Grayon’s girlfriend (Eiza Gonzáles) who provides a hint of vulnerability and humanity, although this isn’t the would-be tragic tale of how she got swept away by a sociopath. Grayson is such a towering larger-than-life presence that it almost obfuscates the culpability of her enablers.

The final narrative note is a balm because the bad guys triumphing so big is perhaps too much to take for an audience, and films are there to see comeuppance given. But we know bad guys get away with it all the time, heading corporations, corruption, dodgy pasts, becoming president, etc. So that is perhaps the message that hangs: that we are run by crooks. And anyway, she philosophically wins because she had already stated fiercely, under duress, what she thinks of this outcome.

The Sweet Smell of Success

 

  The Sweet Smell of Success

Alexander Mackendrick, 1957, USA

Screenplay: Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman

Coming from Ealing, Mackendrick went to America and made this vehement attack on the noxious shwbiz gossip journalism scene. Moving stateside, the wit is less satirical and more acidic. Full of memorable put-downs and one-liners that are just desperate to punch you. The pace is at an authoritative stride and you’d best keep up. 

Elmer Bernsteins’s score keeps up the jazz dizziness and cool, never overpowering the dialogue but always paralleling the sense of characters constantly riffing. And with that heavy-hitting script and actors at their best, with that agile camera following and gliding through James Wong Howe’s wonderful black-and-white photography, it’s definitely a film where everyone is at the top of their game.

The screenplay is by Ernest Lehman and Clifford Odets from Lehman’s novel, and it’s a legendary script. It’s film noir with the nihilism and wisecracks transported to column writers rather than private dicks. And even if there is the implied gloss of the entertainment industry and we’re visiting high end clubs and restaurants, we’re firmly in the gutter and underbelly here. Tony Curtis practically sweats self-loathing as Sidney Falco, the press agent trying to simultaneously suck up to and siphon some power from columnist J.J. Hunsecker. Burt Lancaster as Hunsecker seems to turn the very air around him to cruelty. And boy, Lancaster and Curtis know just how to deliver those zingers. The former’s sleaziness and the latter’s ever-present ominous threat are palpable essences. Falco avoids the conscience-pricking of his secretary whilst Hunsecker connives to destroy his sister’s romance (Susan Harrison) to the decency of a jazz musician (Martin Milner). That’s the plot that barely hints at the poisonous flow of character and scheming, the hints of the incestuous and moral vacuity. All for the sake of personal weakness, cynicism and show business.

And of course, these men would never think they might be beaten at their own game.

A cold classic.

Blade Runner 2049 (just a first watch)

Denis Villeneuve, 2017, 

USA-UK-Canada

I know it’s going to take second watch to fully determine what I think of Villeneuve’s continuation of Ridley Scott’s classic. I like Villeneuve ever since I thought the direction of ‘Sicario’ proved exceptional, but I felt ‘Arrival’ had major problems that dented my appraisal of him (although that was more the material than his execution). From the trailer, I thought ‘Blade Runner 2049’ was going to be a more action-filtered rendition of the premise, hyped-up with adrenalin for a modern audience, so I was pleased and surprised that the tone proved to be measured and faintly abstract. In fact, it’s so wilfully – and in my opinion appropriately – languid and conceptual that this seems to obscure its storyline: it has been accused of lacking story, but the storyline seems to me to offer plenty to chew on. A replicant (an artificial human) with an identity/midlife crisis is going about his job of killing other replicants when he is given reason to follow up on his heritage; this leads him to a revelation that makes him think he is special as well as to the narrative of the previous film, but in a nice snub to The Chosen One trope that is so dominant in fiction, he finds he is mistaken. Rather, he sacrifices himself for the greater good. This seems plenty to be getting your teeth into and perhaps it is the overwhelming art-design and mood that leads people to believe the narrative is smothered and lesser than it is. 

And this is a gorgeous film. Many times, I found myself marvelling at the visuals, with Roger Deakins’ cinematography accentuating the glare of the opening, the perpetual neon night of Los Angeles and the art design of Jared Leto’s domain. The film is almost overwhelming with visual wonder – many of the urban vistas are breathtaking – but it also abundant with details to sift through: Pan Am adverts left over from the original; 'Peter and the Wolf' as a ringtone; the idea that a personality is just memory on a data stick (an idea completely in tune with Philip K Dick’s agenda); etc. Surely it is a veritable wealth of Easter Eggs that it is impossible to parse on a single watch. On top of that, the holo-Vegas fight and the final battle in a flood are exemplary action pieces.

“K” (Ryan Gosling) has a personality built upon artificially implanted memories, but when he gets home, all he wants is a traditional set-up where a devoted wife-figure serves him dinner and dotes. Is such an old-fashioned domestic desire programmed into him? Indeed, are we to deduce such desires can be credited to his programming or a more independent personality, growing from the programming, and that this vision of an idealised lifestyle is derived from the surrounding patriarchal/misogynistic culture? Nature or nurture? And are we to assume in this future setting that gender-politics haven’t gathered any nuance in the past hundred years, at least? It’s easy to take issue with such details but it remains steadfastly ambiguous and that is surely a strength and a nod to the unresolved questions of the original, questions it snakes around answering and mostly leaves open-ended.

We can maybe attribute “K”’s heterosexuality (and that is presumably programmed too) as triggering the objectified female holograms, but we don’t see any parallel and balancing experiences from the women character’s perspective so it leaves the film wide open for accusations of misogyny. This is mitigated by having Robin Wright as “K’”s boss, even taking advantage of her power by making a pass at him; also by shading Luv (Sylvia Hoeks) by having her seem increasingly saddened during her actions, as if she is asking herself Is this all I am: a murderous replicant? Mark Kermode makes a solid argument that actually it is the women of ‘Blade Runner 2049’ that hold all the power and that it is the patriarchal mindset of the male characters that hinders them in seeing things clearly. More than once, characters are told their attractions are programmed and then the film continues to maintain the air of ambiguity. Perhaps it is human vanity that we wish the replicant characters to be human? But the original surely took a jab at this by having Roy Blatty (Rutger Hauer) in the original be the most soulful character, despite the humans?

Indeed, it is surely the female characters that actually have more to do and show. The men come from the stoic, underplayed side of things, and one of the main frictions is waiting to see if Ryan Gosling will break out of his reserve. When Harrison Ford turns up, he effortlessly shows that you don’t need so much to exude a broken, grizzled machismo. Jared Leto has come in for attack for its high mannerisms, but that is surely a piece with the original replicants. But no, it’s the women that get to show more layers, more evident intelligence and range; and with the female prostititute and assassin replicants, they express a barely subsumed tiredness at working within patriarchal culture is expressed. It’s this that muddies the waters of criticisms for ‘Blade Runner 2049’s gender politics: it’s not that they don’t have some grounding but that it’s working on a more complex terrain than might be originally thought.

The thematic heft of ‘Blade Runner 2049’ is surely stronger than the original, which benefited and may be seen as superior from having a simple film noir narrative and a romantic intention that were instantaneously familiar as a guide through the tremendous art design. That Villeneuve with Michael Green and Hampton Fancher’s screenplay manages to capture and continue much of the ambiguity and abstract tone, smothered in state-of-the-art effects and set design, is surely a remarkable and stubborn achievement (although it might be seen by detractors as just pilfering and imitation). The fact that it is surely to be hotly grilled and debated in many studies to come – not least about its gender politics – is surely indication that, although already mostly warmly received, it’s true worth is yet to come. And even in that, it follows in its seminal original’s footsteps. 

Blade Runner

Ridley Scott, 1982, USA-Hong Kong- UK

The look alone makes this an instant classic. The dazzle of the cityscapes are true sci-fi visions of the like only seen on book covers and comics. This is like Judge Dredd’s Mega City One come alive. Philip K Dick himself approved. Even now, where CGI makes all things possible, this still astounds. Douglas Trumbell’s special effects are outstanding. It has a convincing grubbiness, an overstuffed but hang-dog feel, the futuristic and retro crushed together leaving little space for people. Here is a world that doesn’t quite to seem to have daytime - maybe the sheer size of the buildings won’t let the sun in; or maybe pollution? - allowing plenty of space to assault the eye with neons whilst giant billboards give what sound like haunting disjointed Eastern vocals to the sweeps of Vangelis’ electronic-and-saxophone score. It’s a soaring score that is quintessentially of the Eighties but also transcendent.

There are numerous unforgettable set designs in the busy streets, Tyrell’s spacious and yet stifling room, JF Sebastian’s cluttered apartment, or Deckard’s apartment whose lighting makes it look as if he is living in an air-con unit. It’s a wealth of chiaroscuro. There is a dreamy segueing between scenes with the application of music that provides a faintly abstract ambience that allows the feeling that this is deeper than it actually is. But what mood.

It is of course based upon Philip K Dick’s novel ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’: Hampton Fancher and David People’s script contains Dick’s reality-bothering existentialism and paranoia to a film noir plot, giving it a recognisable focus, but there is still enough of PDK’s doubt about humanity and perception to give this an edge. Rick Deckard (Harrison ford) is an android-assassin – a “Blade Runner” – called in to hunt down a particular group of these murderous replicants (artificial humans made as a slave race but inevitably grown too big for their boots). Each time he is nearly killed, only saved by lucky interruptions and the replicant desire to finish him off in fancy ways. It’s enough to think his skills as a hunter are somewhat exaggerated. As Mark Kermode writes:

When making the 2000 documentary On the Edge of Blade Runner, I asked Rutger Hauer why he thought Harrison Ford was so reluctant to talk about what is now considered a timeless sci-fi classic. “He’s such a dumb character,” Hauer replied mischievously of Ford’s android-hunter Deckard. “He gets a gun put to his head and then he fucks a dish-washer!”

Ford looks permanently baffled while Hauer is quite ripe, filtering all the film’s melodrama. In fact, every performance is a little bit weird and this too adds to the oddball tone which all helps the feeling of a slightly alien futuristic society. The biggest misstep is perhaps how the film adds in a little roughing-up of Rachel (Sean Young) when Deckard and she finally get to romancing. 

Its key legacies are: Giant global corporations, environmental decay, overcrowding, technological progress at the top, poverty or slavery at the bottom -- and, curiously, almost always a film noir vision. Look at "Dark City," "Total Recall," "Brazil," "12 Monkeys" or "Gattaca" and you will see its progeny. 

Robert Ebert

Like all seminal works, it has been absorbed so much into general culture that it’s impossible to recall how remarkable this look was, but it still proves overwhelming. ‘Blade Runner’ gave us an updated ‘Metropolis’, and along with ‘Alien’* has gone a long way to defining the look of science-fiction on film. That’s no small thing and this is a classic that can be watched again and again. But you knew that already. 

• Although Carpenter’s ‘Dark Star’ (’74) surely set the true precedent for workers-in-space.

FrightFest 2016 Day 3

THE MASTER CLEANSE

Bobby Miller, 2016, USA

Socially awkward Paul (Johnny Galecki) goes to a self-help retreat where he discovers that all his negative traits are manifest into initially cute monsters. It’s like Cronenberg meets ‘Sesame Street’. I say ‘Sesame Street’ rather than ‘The Muppets’ because tthere is an agenda other than just humour and because there is a message here, an intent to illustrate human relationships and loneliness. Like ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ or ‘Being John Malkovich’, a fantastical conceit is used to puncture the human condition and although ‘The Master Cleanse’ may not be as devastating as those films, and even if its metaphors aren’t really that subtle, they still contain a forthright emotional charge. Kill your monsters or they will kill you. Think Todd Haynes’ ‘Safe’ by Michel Gondry perhaps, or ‘Scanners’ for the indie crowd that liked ‘The Lobster’. It is amiable, low key, well played and deceptively light of touch so that maybe, just maybe, it becomes genuinely affecting.

THE REZORT 

Steve Barker, 2016, Spain/UK

After a zombie apocalypse, there’s one island where the undead still walk to provide safari fun for those who want to vent on walking cadavers. Then, of course, the systems go down due to sabotage and all hell breaks loose. A decent entry in the zombie canon – yes, ‘Westword’… oh okay, ‘Jurassic Park’ with zombies – that doesn’t do anything new but keeps a breezy pace, looks as clean as a brochure and only rarely drops real clunkers (hey, who’s the real monster here?). It even finds room to give genuine pathos to the otherwise cartoonish annoying yoofs who are just along for a real-life first-person shooter. It makes the zombie outbreak a fast and brutal one - these are the kind of undead that run and swarm -  and remembers that this genre – as George Romero said from the start – is always for social commentary. 

ABATTOIR

Darren Lynn Bousman, 2016, USA

Someone’s stealing crime scenes. Entire rooms where murders were committed. Investigative reporter Julia (Jessica Lowndes) and toughnut cop Grady (Joe Anderson) are on the case in this mash-up of film noir and supernatural thrillers. Inspired by a comic serial, this blend doesn’t quite work here: the script isn’t vivid or cutting enough. I was talking to someone afterwards that said it should’ve gone the whole hog and set it in the Forties or something. Indeed, I can see a black-and-white, less modern version making more of an impression: as it is, there is a feel of dress-up to the whole thing. Nevertheless, Dayton Callie cuts an eerie figure as the procurer of murder scenes to build one gigantic haunted house. Unfortunately, its ghosts are all CGI swirl that undermine any creepiness otherwise achieved. CGI is just not uncanny enough; it just leaves a so-what feeling if there's no flair to it.  And the final scenes are to full of exposition to haunt.

BLOOD FEAST

Marcel Waltz, USA, 2016

Re-make of the Herschell Gordon Lewis flick credited with starting the whole gorefest trend in horror. But it doesn’t even try to outdo the original in gore or mitigate its datedness by being smart. I mean, perhaps its castration etc is nasty for some, but you really need to up the ante if you’re remaking the granddaddy of splatter films. Rather, just as I couldn’t quite decide if it was just bad or deliberately hokey in a homage to Lewis, the audience started laughing openly at the bad dialogue and it all became enjoyable in an unintentional comedy sort-of way. 

SADAKO vs KAYAKO

Koji Shiraishi, Japan, 2016

And the unintentional comedy vibe continued into this, a misguided merging of two independently creepy franchises. Oh how the audience laughed their way throughout, mostly at the dialogue and at moments that were meant to induce scares; whether at the professor saying, quite blasé, that two days to live is enough or at the spooks killing a bunch of trespassing kids. Maybe it’s intentionally stupid? Despite the title, this is Sadako’s film, really, as her haunted videotape wrecks havoc on a some students and paranormal dabblers. The deaths mostly provoked laughs in the audience until the over-the-top showdown (disappointing and not all that interesting) put paid to any subtlety and creepiness that were so integral to the originals. One of the worst of the weekend, but enjoyable enough with the right amused crowd.

BEYOND THE GATES

Jackson Stewart, 2016, USA

And more 80s horror homage. Of course it looks and sounds the part but there is also something pleasingly authentically “VHS era” about the restrictions of its budget showing through in the limitations of the story, in the roughness at the edges. This is low budget in feel and execution in all the right places so that it feels genuine. A couple of brothers (Chase Williamson and Graham Skipper) come together to clean out the legacy of their missing father, an old video store that is bound to make the audience of a certain age misty eyed with nostalgia. They find an old horror video game horror – you know, pop in the video as a guide to rolling the dice, etc – hosted by 80s horror icon and FrightFest favourite Barbara Crampton and before you can say “‘Jumanji’ for horror fans”, they’ve opened portals to other malevolent worlds. The performances are winningly modest, the script is nicely written and when the gore and prosthetics finally kick in, they don’t disappoint. Who would have thought the 80s would produce a wealth of good homages some decades on?