I Don't Condone This Serial Killer's Actions, But I Will Buy That Sweater From Him

When a movie is about beautiful and hopeful things, we typically accept that it exists for its own sake. Darker tales seem to require justification: that made me feel bad, so did I value it?

I’ve been thinking lately about the challenge of finding value in something that can be vile or even punishing to watch- i.e., films in which people do bad things to each other. I suppose if I were making such a film, my first decision would be how much distance I wanted my audience to have from the brutality itself.

Psycho, for example, features murder that is just real enough to make you jump, maybe even distress you somewhat, but there is an deliberate understanding that you are watching an entertainment, and that allows you some distance so you can actually enjoy being scared.

Of course, brutality when presented differently can be tragic, sickening, or offensive. Jamie and I watched Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible one evening and couldn’t make it through the rape scene (I now regret turning it off, and suppose I may finish the film one day).

This type of violence is of course not entertaining, and sometimes provides no distance at all- even many critics can’t make it through Irreversible without closing their eyes or just walking out- yet a movie like Irreversible confronts and actually does justice to the reality of violence. So you give up safety, but you may be rewarded with catharsis, or an education.

Brutality can also merely live in a film to support an insight or an idea, as I believe it does in Dogtooth, a recent film from Greece. The grown children of the family in Dogtooth are trapped in the little dystopia their deranged father has made of his walled estate. They are the brainwashed victims as well as the most frightening characters of the story. It was difficult, waiting to see what grotesque animal thing they were going to do next to each other or to themselves, but I appreciated how the horror was used to ask questions about coercion and control: does any of this resemble what parents actually do to their children? (Put the sex stuff aside for a moment, if you can.) Is any of this merely a more intense degree of how parents limit their children, shape their perceptions, write a code of laws and then coerce their children to follow it?

When you see violence on film, you typically want to know as soon as possible what species it is. The most challenging horror films, then- to make, and to watch- would have to be those that take a multifaceted approach; a little entertainment value here, a little genuine tragedy there, some stylish violence (it can even be aesthetically interesting), basically a film that plays with the comfort level of the audience and with the very meaning of its material, and, hopefully, gets away with it. Let me mention here two examples of this approach, which find different levels of success.

I’m thinking first of Silent Night, Deadly Night, which I saw a couple of years ago (although in the 80’s I must have passed by that box on the Blockbuster shelf 100 times without renting it) and was flummoxed by it- it made me feel bad, and I was kind of offended, but I couldn't say exactly how. In the film, a little boy is riding with his parents down a lonely highway on a snowy night (Christmas Eve, I think). I can’t remember why they stop the car, but a maniac dressed like Santa Claus kills the boy’s father, and rapes and kills his mother, in front of him (while Johnny Mathis or somebody continues to sing merrily on the radio). Later, as an institutionalized orphan, the boy is friendless, and treated cruelly by the adults in his life. All of this is the origin story for how he himself becomes a serial killer dressed as Santa Claus. What makes this so problematic for me is that once I am exhausted from having sympathy for this Job Junior, I am then asked to enjoy his career as a murderer the same way I might find entertainment in, say, watching Michael Myers plant a kitchen knife in someone’s head, as a fantasy that activates my imagination for casual entertainment- in short, a thrill. That fusion of tones seems flip and ugly, yet its novelty and boldness seem to hold potential. That is to say: the fact that the film is actually capable of shocking me with its approach suggests that it's moving in an untried direction, and that in itself is valuable. Who knows what a more intelligent foray in the same direction might yield?

More recently, we have I Saw the Devil, which at over two hours is even more exhausting than Silent Night, yet almost worth it. It is not as violent or as upsetting as Irreversible, but it is obsessively bloody, and earned from the audience, at its worst moments, some gasps and cries of disbelief. Far from being clear about the distance it wants to provide, it dances between objectified horror and intimate tragedy, yet with far more skill than the campy Silent Night. The virtuoso sequence I think of the most makes a struggle inside a fast-moving car look like bodies swirling in a giant Vitamix, throwing some implausible spectacle our way so we can sit at arm’s length and catch our breath. Other scenes, however, are as merciless and unpleasant as the deadpan killings in Summer of Sam.

It has good photography, nicely realized characters, and a high-energy performance from Choi Min-sik (he of the very nice sweater). But as technically assured as it might be, I can't tell if its tonal ambiguity is merely incidental, or if it's an incomplete attempt to transcend the horror genre by playing with our perception of violence. Either way, the amount of blood and sheer length of the film make the celebration of violence the center of the experience, drowning out any other possible concerns. Specifically, it's hard to experience the combo plate of dark and tragic feelings we're meant to have in the third act, because we are tired- and it's not emotional exhaustion as much as plain fatigue. Thematically, then, this lacks assurance- it has the chance to escape the label of "torture horror," but it piles on the brutality and increasingly facile spectacle, as though worried we could never love it for anything else.

Aesthetics 101

Let me guess- you're in the mood for a conversation about the nature of art, and you need an unexpected documentary to throw a spark on the tinder. Make straight for Between the Folds, a PBS special that takes you on a grand tour of the arresting and unsung world of contemporary origami. Once again, Jamie is to thank for the find.

It begins with an artist from Israel making some grandly lyrical statements about the act of folding: "...DNA folds, too! Life comes from the act of folding..," etc., the kind of let's-tie-the-whole-universe-together talk that comes frothing out of drunk people at parties, and I'm afraid I rolled my eyes at it. I regretted this later, when I realized how much the movie had, in good time, earned the right to draw a line from origami to just about any other human concern, certainly not excluding the origin of life.

This documentary is populated by artists, scientists and philosophers who a.) fold paper, b.) are fiercely individual, and c.) know how to muse well. Musing and origami clearly go together; these paper folders do not do either frivolously. By the end of the hour, I thought I had never heard a more thoughtful, articulate, diverse, or productive forum on the nature of art, the more intractable problems in art, or on the intersections of art and math, art and science, or art and philosophy. I'm quite serious, it really is that rich of a program- and all the while, you're looking at paper creations, which, rather than getting tiresome after 20 or 30 minutes, keep getting more surprising and spectacular as you move along.

The most astonishing thing to me was how these artists could refer specifically to origami, yet seem to be talking generally about all media of art. A Frenchman laments that the young people who approach origami today are mostly drawn to its technical possibilities- that their delight in the potential complexity of a piece surpasses their concern for aesthetics. Then an American responds by reminding us that technology is usually developed in waves, and that art almost always progresses once we learn to properly wield new methodologies. I immediately thought of cinema, how much its soul has been sapped in the last two decades by new methods. And then thought of Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry, how they pile new methods into their tool kits along with the old, and how sublime the results have been.

If Roman Polanski had directed "The Social Network"

The best part of The Social Network is its opening titles, with Jesse Eisenberg hurrying silently through the Harvard campus at night. Nothing is spoken for several moments as we watch and the music plays. The music is very good at building anticipation. It paints optimism and warmth in one moment, and danger in the next. It suggests a rich inner life for our protagonist. It made me feel as though I were peeling away the first layer of a mystery- not one with detectives, but perhaps an emotional mystery that would even teach me something new. It said "you have no idea what's coming, but it's going to hit you, George." It more than earned my keen interest.

I am a needy movie watcher. I need to be emotionally involved in the art I am experiencing. What followed in The Social Network didn't completely fail to engage me in this way, but hardly to the degree that this opening- not to mention the film's commercial and critical success, and the opinions of people I know- had led me to expect.

There were moments I liked, and they all belonged to Eisenberg. He really was excellent at bitterly zinging people while looking deeply wounded himself. And the ugliness of that "glottal stop" scene was an interesting surprise. And sure, I get that he's got barrel vision- he's "wired in," to cite a well-used metaphor from the film- and only gets deeper in that mind frame the more he fails socially, which is a big paradox. I get that, and it's something. It places this material a notch above "Nick Burns, Your Company's Computer Guy."



At its best, The Social Network is an uncompromising film that doesn't pander. Yet for each thing this movie has in spades- and snotty dialogue about business, law, and computer code is definitely one of those things- it comes up short somewhere else. Most of all, it just takes itself too seriously. "I wish someone would slip on a banana peel," lamented my wife. A moment later, one of the characters seemed to take her recommendation and gave us a throwaway pratfall. But it only made us sad, like when you order blueberry pie in a diner and the filling is that gooey compote from a can. We just needed to laugh, preferably with the movie. Many, many lines were served in the manner of your favorite bad-good tv drama. Volleyed breathlessly in shouting matches. Left to hang in silence just before a character turns to exit. Or on at least two occasions, delivered after a character actually swivels around in a chair after having faced a window in reverie. Does anyone acknowledge the whiff of Dawson's Creek here? No. They're too busy trying for knock-out punches.

That brings us to Roman Polanski. Had he been in charge here, he would have owned every bit of this hamming. When his films are silly, he knowingly opens a whole can of it. Don't ever see Bitter Moon or Frantic if camp puts you off. Those two films, which Jamie and I once paired in an ill-advised double feature, are on the more guilt-inducing end of Polanski's work. (For those of you who have seen Frantic, Jamie said one of the funniest movie comments I've ever heard at the very end, when you see the garbage truck roll away: "Did he throw her in the trash?")

Think about it: this movie is so serious that it can't even wink about the fact that Justin Timberlake is in it. Polanski might have used him the way they used Paul Reubens in Blow. Come to think of it, he might have fired Timberlake and hired Reubens to be Sean Carter. Then he would have played that business with the chicken- which I think was supposed to be funny- for laughs and creepiness, and scored both. And that pathetic tantrum by Eduardo's girlfriend? Hopeless melodrama needs a good home. That scene would be so much happier in a Polanski film. He might have even let that girl burn Eduardo's building to the ground.

Polanski's new film, The Ghost Writer, is some kind of incredible trick: it seamlessly winks in one moment and throttles you in the next. There are some pretty stunning voyeuristic shocks here, and they're no less powerful for standing next to the tongue-in-cheek moments (example of the latter: that news helicopter scene was pretty silly). And how about the contrast between acting styles? Ewan MacGregor speaks at a clip, and seems to be acting lines straight out of a pithy novel; Tom Wilkinson is darkly methodical, as though directed by Kubrick; Jim Belushi appears finely tuned and rehearsed; and the amazing Eli Wallach comes out of nowhere with a bracing naturalism that shouldn't have any business here. Yet Polanski somehow waves a wand and nothing ever feels stitched together. I don't pretend to know how he does this, how he sells a story that can be comical or outrageous- but it must have something to do with his gracious acknowledgement of those very elements.

I suppose that The Ghost Writer is more traditional as a screen story than The Social Network, and that making this material so hugely cinematic was a more straightforward exercise than trying to make cinema out of the Mark Zuckerberg story. My hat goes off to the effort- it really isn't a bad film. But I'd see The Ghost Writer instead any day.

snow = movies

Since watching Withnail and I, a comedy about two young men on a ragged weekend in the country, I have been pondering so-called "cult" movies- not those that are loved for their poor quality (e.g. Troll 2), but rather those that are actually impressive in some way, as Withnail and I indeed is.



Cult movies of this persuasion:
-consider scenes more important than plot.
-consider style more important than themes.
-do not need to be taken seriously to be enjoyed, but paradoxically, have a sense of freedom and cockeyed humor that win them more respect than many movies that do demand to be taken seriously.

I could be wrong about this, but does it seem to you as though fewer movies of this kind are being made than ever before? I fear that there is almost no one left who does not demand to be taken seriously somehow, and that the appeal of perhaps wasting a bit of time, money and/or pride with experimentation is at an all-time low.

Withnail and I is an experience I would repeat any time. I find myself imagining that this was, in the minds of everyone concerned, the high point of their careers (even Richard Griffiths- when was he ever more fun?).

A round of ice skating with my girl...




...and we had our courage up to watch the film event of the season (maybe the year), Blue Valentine.

What a vast realization has been achieved here. I can't imagine the amount of work this represents. It's so beautiful and so real. I wish it had been on a stage so I could have clapped for them. (I'm never one of those people who claps in a movie theater.)

We had a lot to talk about after such a rich experience. You may know how this movie ends. I won't write what happens, but I may spoil it anyway because I'm going to write what Jamie and I think is going to happen to the characters after the ending. So... we can tell you that they're not done. They've spent years running up against the hard surface of their dilemma and have never gotten past the first step of acknowledging and articulating, together, the nature of it - how they hurt each other. In real life things are rarely as final as they are in the movies, and this movie wisely leaves things undecided at its teary conclusion- at least, no one really decides anything out loud. So most likely, one of these people is going to wind up at a library and find a Terrence Real book, and maybe then they can start working at it. The work never stops, after all.

Then the snow came back.



















The Market Basket Red Box was pretty well picked through but we managed to get Please Give. Never transcendent, but comforting. Its campy, angsty quest to wrestle truth out of pedestrian life made me think of the talkative, slice-of-life Miramax movies of the 90's. I used to head out alone to see two of them in a row. There's a pantheon I carry in my head of the best examples of that decade and that style (Ruby in Paradise, The Brothers McMullen, Chasing Amy...) Please Give was made by Nicole Holofcener, whose early film Walking and Talking belongs to that list. I wouldn't say she hasn't progressed, but Please Give still gave me that old feeling.

Another night out had us giving Black Swan a try. The night was cold and slippery and presaged some of the cross-country skiing we'd be trying 36 hours later. You know, sometimes I don't mind living here at all.

Black Swan has some decent moments of horror and plenty of cringes, mostly from icky makeup effects, but that gets old. It wants to be a stylish thriller about a girl who swings from an unnatural level of innocence- coddled in a New York apartment by her mother, who traps her, creepily, in girlhood- all the way to unrestrained sexuality and danger. That premise would make a nice springboard for a film with higher ambitions than what we're afforded here. Black Swan feels too lazy, especially after witnessing the enormous effort of something like Blue Valentine. The only way it avoids a completely predictable journey from A to B is through manipulative plot twists, all of which depend on the fact that the girl can't trust her own perception or her memory- that every experience she has can later turn out to have been just a dream, or a hallucination. You can't coast on that. You need truth to sell a story, and when the very end of a film smells like bull the way this ending did, that's how you know they didn't find enough truth along the way.

What I'm saying is, I would rather just watch Jamie fall down. Faire du ski!

True Love in the Movies

I have clawed my way to New York and back four times in the last two months. Our return on the penultimate occasion was a beat-the-blizzard action thrill ride, with cars sliding into guard rails and rolling backwards into the snowy woods. We were 20 miles from Boston when night fell and the blizzard began in earnest. Perhaps only 100 yards ahead were visible, and the mess of snow on the highway surface ruined any chance of us drivers seeing the paint that makes possible the crucial process of organizing ourselves into lanes. Yet the effort was well rewarded by a grocery store found still open upon our arrival, and by hot vegetable soup and crusty bread. That was the same trip when we won a wreath on Christmas Eve, tossed to us for free by a vendor getting ready to scrap a tragic heap of trees (as he hula-hooped with a four-foot diameter wreath himself).

On one of the earlier of these adventures, I insisted that we make for the Anthology Film Archives to see a show of Robert Breer short films. Breer made the short film 69 which had haunted me since I'd seen it in college, and I'd never bothered to learn more about him but always meant to. His work is abstract and experimental, and I've always recalled that 69 first interested me because without directly offering a narrative or even a recognizable image, it evoked a series of feelings that in a way added up to a story.



The program was difficult, and I give Jamie a lot of credit, first for sitting through it, and then for not pretending to have enjoyed it. The opening short, Blazes, is a low-tech assault, three minutes spent staring into a strobe light while you attempt to discern what colors and shapes are moving around in front of you. Even more of a challenge was the cruel Fist Fight, with its incoherent soundtrack and rapid cutting among images that tremble and fall out of focus. The gentle and lovely Fuji, with rotoscoped footage of the mountain seen from a window of a passing train, let us come down a bit from the high seas of avant-garde animation before we were dizzily deposited on the curb once more. I still contend that 69 is excellent, and I found that I feel about the same about Breer's material now as I did then: that while it's opaque, its energy is right there in front of me, and it really inspires me to make something.

The best Christmas film we saw this year was The Shop Around The Corner, which I picked based on an outstanding list that I found on Wikipedia that organizes not only movies that have Christmas itself as their subject, but movies which, to various degrees, incorporate Christmas into their plots, or simply use Christmas as a setting or backdrop to their stories. The film is essentially a romantic comedy, but the romance between the two leads, although sweet and well acted, is not its most interesting or memorable thread. What I loved more was the bigger picture of the shop and its employees and customers. The boss, the salespeople, the porter and the bosses' wife who never appears, but whose image is painted by the faces of the other characters as they speak of her (or to her on telephones)- each character is an individual that I cared about and wanted to follow. The world of this film is so lovingly realized, so vibrant and full of stories that even if you took away the main love story, the rest of it would carry on just fine.

Nevertheless, it reminded me of how much difficulty I have believing in love when I see it on a movie screen. Of all the hundreds of movies you've seen about two people in love, how many of them find a way to transmit a small piece of how love feels, what it is, why it happens in the first place- some glimpse of it that allows you to empathize with the characters and understand what they're experiencing? Love is usually presented to us the same way that Godzilla or a tap dancer is presented to us- as a fantastical object of entertainment, something to make us smile, but not for us to understand, think too much about, or believe in with any seriousness. Does it feel as though the filmmakers themselves really understand, or want to understand, the love they're selling? If I can't imagine that they do, how am I supposed to care about it?

I don't know how a great love story is written or told successfully, but when it does happen, it looks criminally easy to do. We reflected on this recently after seeing The African Queen. I believed in Bogart and Hepburn's characters- they were both insufferable nerds who appeared to perfectly deserve each other, and that is worth celebrating. Yet why should this be so simply and naturally true in one film and not in another? When they face down the Germans at the end and wind up in a tight spot, there really seems to be a lot at stake. The cartoonishness of the film allows you a bit of distance (we both remarked at how many moments felt exactly like a cartoon, not excluding the goofy jungle soundtrack), but in spite of the comic tone, my investment in the characters and my wish that they succeed were profound. I can only think of a few films that really bring a blossoming romantic connection to life for me, and this is one of them (also coming to mind right now are Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Before Sunrise).

Yet a love story doesn't even have to be so deeply convincing for a movie to completely succeed. Take Moonstruck, which we recently watched for the hundredth time. I certainly believed that Cher didn't love Danny Aiello, but her and Nicolas Cage? It was too whirlwind, too larger-than-life, not on a scale that I recognized. But do I care? The real subject of that film is not the romance between the leads, but the romance of being in New York City, and that feeling is burning madly in every scene. And it easily provides you with quotes to repeat endlessly while tramping through that city with your wife. The winner: "I seen a wolf in everyone I ever met, and I... SEE A WOLF... IN... YOU !"

Other movies we saw recently, all recommended:

True Grit, about which has been written, at this point, everything that could possibly be said (I'll just say I enjoyed it a lot);

Secret Sunshine, which is emotionally exhausting, but strangely thrilling in its willingness to explore novel questions about religion, grief and acceptance;

The Kids Are All Right, which we'd been meaning to see for months, and which is a plenty smart family drama, in spite of its plot mechanics;

and Toy Story 3, which winds up one of the only movie trilogies in history (how many are there?) in which all three films are pretty much great.

Pee Wee (and Kurdistan)

Since we had so much fun with the windows on Halloween, I brought out the construction paper again. Here are some views of the Thanksgiving windows:



































The shadows are really convincing, I think...















And here we are enjoying our leafy neighborhood.















Our Thanksgiving mission is to see The Pee Wee Herman Show on Broadway. Whether this happens is up to the TKTS fates, whom will invoke the morning of.

To prepare, we rented the original Pee Wee Herman Show - the HBO special from when the show was at the Roxy in L.A. It occurred to me that this was the very first video my family ever rented, when we got our first VCR, and that I hadn't seen it since.

If you want a wave of nostalgia, watch Paul Reubens jump through that puffy jagged door, around 25 years old, and commit every ounce of his energy to a character that few people had yet seen or heard about. You instantly know why he was a hit. It's not just how funny and original he was- it's the energy. He's dancing a comical little ballet, painting each emotion with the full extent of his body. It's infectious, it's full of truth, and you can read it from the back row. The audience almost sounds like they're laughing too much, but they probably couldn't help it.

While I'm here, I need to tell you about a film I saw a few weeks ago: Half Moon. I have to admit, when I picked up the box and saw that it's a festival darling about Kurdish musicians making a bus journey through Iraq to get to a gig, I had certain expectations right away about the style of it, the message, and so on. These assumptions were mostly incorrect. There is a refreshing element of chaos in this film, and it enhances it in every direction- it makes richer the unfolding of the story, it brings mystery and realism at once to the experience, and it binds closer the characters who must negotiate it. I doubt that you will guess how this film ends. You might guess some of the events, but the way they happen, and the way it will make you feel- you won't anticipate it, and you'll want to talk about it later.

Jamie brought up some excellent points about Half Moon:
1. The bus is awesome. It has wood benches. And it's painted with images that mean something to the characters but not so much to us- one of many ways that the film reminds us we're only peeking in on these people's lives and we're not allowed to (nor could we) know everything about them.

2. We love Kako, the bus driver. His character is so big, and dominates so much of the first act, that we assumed the film would center on him. He becomes less essential as the film continues and we began to miss him.

3. Even though the story takes us across cold mountains, Half Moon has a warm feeling, coming from the cozy bus, from the family huddled together inside it, and from the personalities of the characters- watching Kako placate his angry wife was the moment I knew I loved this. You might say that this film gives you a Thanksgiving feeling. It's about strength in family and in togetherness. Have some hot apple crisp handy, as we did.

Thanks, Jamie, for finding this clip. We see here the old musician walking into a village of exiled Iraqi female singers. The woman of his dreams lives there- she has a voice with no equal, he is convinced- and he needs her for the performance. Notice the ominous cloud eclipse (best since Bonnie and Clyde).

Happy Halloween!

First of all, check out our lovely window treatment...













...and the resulting shadows in the room.


















And now, a look back.


On Halloween of 2002 I wheeled a clunky tv many blocks through Fort Greene so I could watch The Exorcist with Jamie, my future wife. It was the one-year anniversary of our first meeting. We probably made beans and things from the French grocery and had a floor picnic with wine. (There wasn't much furniture.)

A few years later, in Philadelphia, we began our annual tradition of a Halloween film festival. The first was modest- Repulsion, Halloween, and Vertigo- but it established a rule that the films do not necessarily have to be considered horror films- anything macabre, or suspenseful, or dark in some way is good for the mix. The Picture of Dorian Gray, for example, has excellent horror elements, but might not be found on the same shelf as Sleepaway Camp at your video store. Or "thrillers" like the original Stepford Wives or Alien, which really should be called horror. Or Batman Returns, which will just make you want to put on a costume.

This year's series was prodigious and perhaps the best yet. Here now are our Halloween movie adventures of 2010:

Drag Me To Hell
Easily one of the best films of 2009. This was our second time. Sam Raimi has a strong identity as a filmmaker, but you wouldn't know it if you'd only seen Spiderman. Compare him to Tim Burton, a stylist who mostly succeeded in bringing his own ideas into the mainstream. Evil Dead fans wonder why Raimi's ideas should be less adaptable- where in his current work can we find a trace of that horror/comedy blend that launched his career in the first place? As if in reply, Drag Me To Hell reminds us that he's still here and he can still blow our minds if he wants to.

Killer Klowns From Outer Space
This will make you nostalgic for HBO in the 80's (along with Innerspace and Overboard. Hey, that itself sounds like a good film series idea...) Deserves every ounce of its cult status. I really admire the creativity of the premise, as well as the fascinating special effects. (My neighbor informs me that the film was made by brothers who had worked as special effects artists.) Jamie has good memories of watching it along side her sister when they were... probably too young even for this. Adrienne remains a devoted fan and owns the film. I loved seeing the chamber inside the spaceship before and after it got filled with cotton candy pods. And, of course, the shadow puppet scene. That would be legitimately cool in any movie.

Children of the Corn
What walks behind the rows? What the hell was it? We saw this one with the neighbors, who are well-versed horror fans. Not the best selection of the year. Despite a couple of good scares, it seemed to have unrealized potential- especially the supernatural element that came out of nowhere at the end.
By the way, when you google "children of the corn image" this is what comes up:












Return of the Living Dead
Now this is what I'm talking about- this movie has everything! What a riot of horror ideas crammed into one busy plot! The opening sequence is the best part, though- it builds to the precipitating incident in a gradual and often oblique way that seems to presage Tarantino's entire career. There are of course zombie films in every flavor, but I'll bet this is the most playful and delightfully wacky of the lot.

Let Me In
Powerful from beginning to end. The emotional complexity of the film is more than I even want to deconstruct. I'll just call it brilliant and let it live as a raw experience. We saw this one at the spooky throwback "Entertainment Cinemas" at Fresh Pond, under a full moon, part of a most excellent Friday night date.



The Worst Witch
We usually find a place on the program for this gem. Inflatable skeletons, pink pentagrams and hopeless green-screen special effects with no irony in sight. I dress as Tim Curry's character and sing and dance along. We treated the neighbors to this spectacle (some dancing, too) and they were surprisingly appreciative. What I realized this time around is that I love the attention to detail - when the girls are in potion class, there's a poster behind them with formulae explained in pictures; in the hallway, there's a sign with a broom crossed out (no flying in the hallways).

The House of the Devil
After The Worst Witch, the consensus was that someone needed to die, brutally, in the next feature. A search through Netflix brought us to The House of the Devil. This, in spite of the excellence of Let Me In, wins first prize in our little festival.

As we watched the opening minutes of The House of the Devil, it began to sink in that I was watching a scary movie- an actually scary movie, Hitchcock scary, Kubrick scary. Nothing scary at all had happened so far in the film, but still... there was a hushed yet unmistakable skill in how those first moments were handled, and when you see that, you think, if we're in the hands of craftsmen who can do that, what else can they do?

As it turns out, it seems that they could probably do anything. This is one of the most suspenseful and intelligent horror movies I have ever seen. The plot is simplicity itself- it's the delivery, which mounts the terror so patiently, not playing a single note that hasn't been earned, that is so exquisite. Even in a group of people joking and laughing all the way through it, the tension was almost unbearable.

Kuroneko
Finally, Jamie and I made our way to Kendall Square for a matinee of Kuroneko, a 60's Japanese ghost story (samurai and such), perhaps not as masterful as Ugetsu but worth checking out. Kuroneko means "black cat," and apparently the Mexican title of the film is El Grito del Sexo, which Google translates for me as "The Scream of Sex." Now that is a good movie title. Why don't we have movies like that in the American multiplexes? Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan star in... The Scream of Sex.

When a character named Raiko showed up and told a story about how he'd slain a demon, Jamie started jumping up and down- she'd recently read the legend to which the film was referring. No fair, I want to be told something I know about. It's exciting, right?