Weekly visions - week 43, 2024

Hiroshima Mon Amour , directed by Alain Resnais, written by Marguerite Duras, France/Japan, 1959 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

A very slow start - sort of the quintessential ‘French film’: fifteen minutes or so of disembodied voices repeating apparently disconnected words, images from Hiroshima, fragments of bodies in an embrace - preludes to a meditation about reality, stories we tell, and the level of openness we allow ourselves when we encounter, for a little more than a moment, the right person who seems ready to listen to us and, hopefully, to understand us.

How to Have Sex , written and directed by Molly Manning Walker, United Kingdom, 2023 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

One of those films that keeps you continuously on the edge, afraid that something terrible will happen to characters you don’t really know, but for whom you, somehow, deeply care. Lots of loud partying and very quiet feelings, that shattered me by the time the film ended…

One Cut of the Dead Spin-Off: In Hollywood / カメラを止めるな！スピンオフ『ハリウッド大作戦！』 , directed by Yûya Nakaizumi, written by Shinichiro Ueda, Japan, 2019 - ⭐⭐⭐

… so much that I couldn’t even consider going to bed. Luckily - here’s where Arrow Video came to the rescue - my Blu-ray of One Cut of the Dead had been delivered that afternoon: this edition includes this one-hour sequel, set in Hollywood; hoping to bring my mood up to an acceptable level, I watched it immediately. It worked: it’s absolutely ‘more of the same’ compared to the original, but still very funny, with the added pleasure that knowing, by now, the ‘rules’ of the game, I could try to figure out by myself the reasons for the inevitable weirdness of the events.

Lamb / Dýrið , directed by Valdimar Jóhannsson, written by Valdimar Jóhannsson and Sjón, Iceland, 2021 - ⭐⭐⭐

Lamb is often described as a folk horror; I would rather classify it as folk tale because there is very little horror in it. Aside from the surrealistic premise and the somewhat abrupt ending, the rest is a slow reflection on the idea that nature gives and nature takes and there are holes in our souls that we desperately want to try to fill. This is very my MUBI trial subscription ended, so, back to my standard watching habits.

Smile , written and directed by Parker Finn, US, 2022 - ⭐⭐½

Smile 2 is in cinemas now, and it has positive reviews (and weirdly it’s the only horror film released in Belgium this October, except from Terrifier 3 which I don’t care about for the time being), so despite not loving the first film when it came out, since it’s on Netflix I refreshed my memory in preparation. I liked it even less, as I found myself remembering and dreading, step by step, the scenes that would come next.
I still hold my original opinions: the only really scary moment is the one from within the car (but this time, it also reminded me that there is a similar shot in Asustados), the acting is sub-optimal, the dialogue is trite, the attempts to inject humour here and there are flat, and it doesn’t succeed at blending a ‘curse film’ à la Ring or It Follows and a trauma-based horror is unsuccessful.

Smile 2 , written and directed by Parker Finn, US, 2024 - ⭐⭐⭐

So, Smile 2 is essentially the same thing again, except for a very confident first scene and a better cast (led by a great performance by Naomi Scott, who reminded me a lot of Sarah Michelle Gellar).
On the positive side, it relies slightly less than the first one on jump scares, and it abandons the wannabe-elevated horror side of the original. Having an unreliable narrator (that is, adopting the point of view of the cursed person having hallucinations) requires restraint, and this time Parker Finn abuses it: it could be believable in the setting of the first film, but such a disconnect between illusion and reality, when surrounded by other people, is not believable.
I also have a major issue with the ‘solution’ presented in this story, but I won’t go into spoilers. And the equation ‘bad skin = monster’… I don’t like it.

One Cut of the Dead – Mission: Remote / カメラを止めるな! リモート大作戦! , written and directed by Shinichiro Ueda, Japan, 2020 - ⭐⭐⭐

Ok, this is not a film, but one of those Zoom/YouTube cast reunions/narrative experiments that film and music stars around the world concocted during the first peak of the Covid pandemic to keep creatively active and cheer up their fans.
But this half-hour effort is perfectly in line with the film and the sequel, and these people kept all being adorable even during lockdown, so I’m listing it here and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.

It’s What’s Inside , written and directed by Greg Jardin, US, 2024 - ⭐⭐⭐½

As usual, a new film insistently advertised by Netflix could be of any quality between good and completely rubbish, and the screenshot attached to It’s What’s Inside positions it at the worst end of this spectrum. After listening to a few positive reviews, I gave it a chance. I have mixed feelings: it’s a clever central concept that lends itself to interesting possibilities, but such potential is explored only to an extent, and when things really start becoming interesting, the plot retreats into a frenetic mess of unlikely decisions, shouting and confusion-by-design leading to reasonably predictable revelations.
The ’tech bro’ role is played by an actor who looks like Mark Zuckerberg, and this was quite distracting.
The idea of colour-coding important information was excellent.
Overall, it’s enjoyable and a good feature film debut for writer/director/editor Jardin, though I would have appreciated a bit more restraint in the excited editing, and a less aggressive soundtrack. Speaking of which… I’m sure I’ve heard the piece of music that ends the film in a more famous movie, but it’s listed everywhere as an original track by composer Andrew Hewitt, and there is no safesearch on Earth that allows me to safely duckduckgo for its title. But it’s killing me.