Weekly visions - week 39, 2024

Séance/降霊, directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, co-written with Tetsuya Onishi, based on the novel Séance on a Wet Afternoon by Mark McShane, Japan, 2000 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I am getting warmer towards Kurosawa’s understated way of telling horror stories (again, I wonder whether my 3-star assessment of Cure has changed - but it’s currently impossible for me to find a good copy). Séance is a TV movie, but the only clue that betrays this fact is the 4:3 aspect ratio. Even though the direction the film is going is quite clear from a certain point early on, the impact of a tragedy on an ‘unremarkable’ couple was moving enough to be compelling, and the film managed to make me feel sorry for these people regardless of their very ill judgement.

Kajillionaire, written and directed by Miranda July, US, 2020 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I remember watching July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know in a cinema almost twenty years ago, and moderately liking it. I also remember being intrigued by the trailer of Kajillionaire a few years ago, but then completely forgetting about it, until I found it this week on Netflix during my short stay in Italy. It’s quirky and it reminded me a bit of Michel Gondry’s work; it’s very funny (I laughed almost every time Richard Jenkins opened his mouth), and quite sad at the same time (you really feel for Evan Rachel Wood’s lead character… Debra Winger’s character is too cruel). Like July’s debut film, I think this one struggles a bit too hard to find an emotional ending.

Grave Encounters, written and directed by Stuart Ortiz and Colin Minihan, Canada, 2011 - ⭐⭐⭐

Stop me if you’ve heard it before: a couple of young unexperienced filmmakers want to shoot a movie, and decide that a found footage horror about a crew of people investigating a local legend is the best way to do it.
The problem is, it’s now 2011, and if the film doesn’t propose anything new, it will just be perceived as derivative of what came before. And indeed Grave Encounters is The Blair Witch Project in a haunted asylum, with many of the same story beats, with a sprinkle of fixed cameras à la Paranormal Activity.
Nevertheless, during its first half I was quite intrigued by it; I had to watch it in two sittings, and when I left it I was genuinely curious about how it would end. Unfortunately, the break I took also made me conjecture about the resolution, and when I came back to the film, I was disappointed by the second part, which goes on for too long without any new ideas - and without a good denouement. The ‘stock’ CGI ghosts with white eyes and an elongated mouth do it a disservice.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, directed by Tim Burton, written by Alfred Gough, Miles Millar with Seth Grahame-Smith, US, 2024 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Having - like most of us, I believe - lost any expectation about Tim Burton’s films for about 20 years (the last movies of his I loved were Big Fish and Corpse Bride), I didn’t have high hopes for a (not really) long-awaited and, honestly, unnecessary sequel to his 1988 film, the one that put the director and his style ‘on the map’.
Instead… I had so much fun with this film.
Granted, it’s still unnecessary and mostly a rehash of the original one, but it made me smile for its whole duration. Could this be a first step for good old Burton to be back?
I have maintained for these 20 years that his output changed when his ‘significant other’ changed, thinking that maybe he had found a different balance in life that made his films also different. So I’m not really surprised to learn that he’s now in a new relationship as well. Time will tell.
A very very very gentle jab at Disney might also be a symptom of a change of direction.
I loved the additions of Jenna Ortega and Monica Bellucci to the cast, and Willem Dafoe is clearly having the best late-career one actor could ask for. And the returning cast was of course great.
I wasn’t expecting a little bit of the film would be in Italian (hilarious homage there) - and spoken in real Italian, not the ’this guy says he can speak Italian, so that’s good enough’ Italian that we hear so often even in high-budget productions?
Finally… is it wrong that I love all of Delia’s art?

When Harry Met Sally…, directed by Rob Reiner, written by Nora Ephron, US, 1989 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (down from ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)

One of the first films I loved. I am not much in the mood for romantic comedies, but I rewatched this in the context of the IndieWeb Movie Club, so I wrote a post about it here. I still liked it a lot, but this time I would have preferred a different ending.
Two stray remarks:

• this time I noticed that the famous ‘I’ll have what she’s having’ line is exactly in the middle of the film’s running time
• as much as I like musicals, I’ve never seen Oklahoma!, so I only know The Surrey with the Fringe on Top because of Billy Crystal’s karaoke scene in this film (actually, I knew its Italian-dubbed version of it - as I watched this film first on Italian Tv ages ago); clearly the universe is trying to tell me something, because two days after rewatching When Harry Met Sally, I heard the song again in a Twin Peaks episode. But Oklahoma! in the West End has just closed, so what should I do…?

Polytechnique, directed by Denis Villeneuve, co-written with Jacques Davidts, Canada, 2009 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I don’t normally buy physical copies of films I haven’t watched before, but when I found the Blu-Ray of Denis Villeneuve’s early film in my favourite shop, I had to ‘blindly’ seize this opportunity (even if the price - € 26 - makes it the most expensive single film I’ve ever bought; but I could go higher if I finally found a good edition of Incendies). I wasn’t disappointed.
The black-and-white dramatisation of the 1989 shooting at the École Polytechnique in Montreal and its consequences is more disturbing and anxiety-inducing than any horror film I’ve watched in the last year or two.
The only criticism I can move to the film is maybe a bit of indulgence in unnecessary camera movements, which can be distracting.
I watched the English version of the film (Villeneuve shot all the scenes with dialogue in two different languages), and then the first third or so of the French version; I think the latter might be the better one because the characters’ interactions feel more natural.

Escape from New York, directed by John Carpenter, co-written with Nick Castle, United Kingdom/US, 1981 - ⭐⭐⭐½

Last week’s The Purge: Election Year reminded me that I had never seen Carpenter’s Escape films, so here I am. As often happens with his films, I wasn’t fully into it: despite an impeding countdown, it lacks any sense of urgency, and all action scenes feel just like… set pieces to go through (including the most static fight scene since Vader Vs Kenobi 1977). No excitement at all. It’s like watching someone else play an adventure game.
It made me think about what Halloween would have looked like with a more dynamic Michael Myers (funny that ’the shape’ from Halloween is the co-writer of this film): quite dull, probably?
We criticise modern ‘New York’ films for clearly having been shot somewhere else, but how much New York City is in this film? And why is it always dark outside (except for one single Plissken-free shot in daylight)?
Isn’t there a bit too much Cabbie-ex-machina, appearing, and disappearing too, whenever it fits the plot?
As usual, I can’t take my eyes and ears off Donald Pleasence whenever he’s in a scene, and it was nice to see Lee Van Cleef in a non-Western role.
Fun fact: in the Italian version, Snake Plissken has been re-named Iena (Hyena) Plissken, probably to make the ‘animalistic’ reputation of Kurt Russell’s character clear to the Italian audience, and ‘Serpente’ (Snake) wouldn’t have matched the lip movement in the dubbing. Too bad he’s seriously lacking hyena tattoos.