Sunday 18 January 2015

Archival Review: Under The Skin (2013)

From http://troublewithfilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12
/under-the-skin-alternative-poster.jpg
Dir. Jonathan Glazer

In the review that I am linking to below, I hesitated whether I would come to love Under The Skin in its unsettling beauty long afterwards. Its nearly a year now, and the film has stayed as one of the most important films I saw in 2014 because it's refused to leave my mind. Revisting it, it still retains its power, though I wish that as many people saw the film on a cinema screen for its full effect. Also of significance since I last saw this is my growing admiration for Scarlett Johansson. As an actress, not the person where there is the Soda Stream controversy to pick over, (look it up if you're curious), she starred in three very unconventional sci-fi films in 2014 in British cinemas - Under The Skin, Lucy (2014) and  Her (2013) - and in all of them she showed a talent that's won me over. Not just taking into account she has three very "different" films in her filmography, all three films stand out as being among the most interesting of the year, which places her up on a higher pedestal for me for the willing to take a risk with all three films. Out of the three, Under The Skin is the one stands out potentially as my favourite film for last year. I intend one day to cover a Best of 2014 post, though with some greater consideration, which is why I did not post one by the start of this January, and this will be a film virtually impossible to knock off number one unless I find another that had such a sensual effect on me.

From https://laceysfilms.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/under-the-skin.jpg
Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium
Between Mica Levi's incredible score, her first for any film mind you, to the juxtaposition of semi-documentary with the most abstract of science fiction, a lot in Under The Skin feels utterly alien, if you mind the pun. The juxtaposition of this story with a realism of being set in Scotland is the deciding factor of the film's effect on me, such ordinary things, even Tescos, turned into things you look at with a new perspective. The result feels like stepping through the world as an extraterrestrial like Johansson.

From http://selectiveviewing.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/under-the-skin.jpg
Personal Opinion:
For the full review, written when I first viewed the film, and whose content still apply perfectly, follow the link to my old blog here

Thursday 15 January 2015

Enemy (2013)

From http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/
en/0/0d/Enemy_poster.jpg
Dir. Denis Villeneuve

For a film that desires to be unconventional, I will start with the conclusion than go backwards. Enemy has a chance, hopefully, to grow in favour for me when I return to it. Again, first opinions are always problematic. The mind is fickle. But there is a clear aspect of the film which is a flaw now. Enemy is incredibly obvious as an attempt at a "strange" film and because of all the other movies I've seen that have influenced it, it's very normal and sells its premise short through trying to have this tone at quite a few points. The strangest and most unnerving aspect is the character dynamics, rather than the more openly obtuse content, of a history teacher Adam (Jake Gyllenhaal) discovering he has a doppelganger, spotting an extra in a film who looks exactly like him called Anthony (Jake Gyllenhaal). It eventually reaches its most interesting content by the third act, when the two learn of each other and infect each other's lives including that of their other halves (Mélanie Laurent and Sarah Gadon). To the point of a sexual favour being hinted at for one of the men to take advantage of, it reaches the uncomfortable tone of David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers (1988), the character drama standing out as the more interesting and best content of Enemy. What feels flawed is the more deliberately abstract content. The spider metaphors, including the divisive final image, the conspiracy and political content etc. do feel too overtly prioritised on a first viewing when the real meat is the two doubles existing in a flux, where they switch roles and become difficult to tell between, and the dynamics that spin out from it.

From http://www.beyondhollywood.com/uploads/
2014/02/ENEMY_DAY25-0078.jpg
What means more, and is of greater interest, is the performances and the psychological content. Gyllenhaal is in the position playing two individuals who the viewer can represent as two sides of the same person as well as separate people. At first, the narrative is of Adam the teacher investigating his doppelganger Anthony, only for the shifting roles of the two, and the involvement of Laurent as Adam's lover Mary and Gadon as Anthony's heavily pregnant wife Helen to take place. This leads to deliberate blurring and implications that the film is the metaphor of a person split into various roles through his sexual desires and boredom. A small cameo by Isabella Rossellini, always someone you want appear in a film even in a cameo, is where this dualist issue is shown further.

From http://thecriticalcritics.com/review/wp-content
/images/enemy-still_1-350x245.jpg
As two people Gyllenhaal is exceptional. Adam and Anthony are too similar to the discomfort for the character Helen, which becomes of importance for her dramatic narrative too, but noticeable differences in body language, without becoming heavy handed, are shown that make the doppelgangers their own complicated people as well as potential halves of each other. Adam cautious and hesitant, Anthony more confident in his stride. It's not just their clothes and the materials around them that represent their personalities - Anthony's motorbike as much part of his cocky persona - but Gyllenhaal's admirable performance as both, able to juggle two distinct characters in a film that calls for questions to be raised, like for James Steward in Vertigo (1958) following Kim Novak's Madeleine, of whether Adam and Anthony are actually the same man in a complicated little mind game. Because of the character interactions involved in the drama, Mélanie Laurent and Sarah Gadon are as of importance too. Unfortunately, Laurent is not given as much as she could've worked with; not just because of her breakout performance in Inglourious Basterds (2009) and the desire to see her act in more films, but because it would've been as interesting, more dynamic, for Enemy to include her more in the narrative. Gadon on the other hand, visibly pregnant in real life on screen and not just playing a pregnant woman, gets a lion's share of the drama which she does well with. Like Geneviève Bujold in David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers, her character is the one stuck in the middle of doubles' interactions, offset further by a scene, adding to the issue, where her husband Anthony is implicated for adultery, the relationship of the two as much part of the dynamics at play. Interestingly, narrowly avoiding this being a film which merely fetishes the sexuality held over the female form, with a lot of sex and nudity for a film with a fifteen certificate in the UK, Gadon's Helen gets to be complicated because of the character dynamics involved, including a great additional twist, just at the end, with spices things up with new implications.

From http://nsa34.casimages.com/img/2013/08/29//130829105320681613.jpg
Enemy though is as much about the talked about spider symbolism and many other things around this drama. Only ninety minutes, Enemy does end up devoting time to this material as much as the central idea, the content around this centre leaving me ambivalent to the film altogether. I have not read the original source novel The Double (2012) by José Saramago, but I do know content like the spider motif was added for this adaptation. The decision to be even more unconventional as a film beyond the doppelganger narrative is both a virtue and a failure which will complicate my attitude to Enemy. The decision for a yellow based lighting and visual palette, with colours still present but dialled down, places Enemy's setting into that where all is not necessarily what it seems without being cliché, a distinct visual look that balances the muted without becoming grotty. The rest of this style, including some of the content, is divisive for me however. There is a danger with films like this where filmmakers will use shorthand tropes to develop a mood that are caught short if thought about for longer than a brief minute. Particularly as director Denis Villeneuve has placed himself in the area of cinema occupied by the likes of David Lynch, he has set himself up for comparison. The best example of the conflict of Enemy's quality is Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans' score. The usher in the theatre I saw Enemy at, who ripped my ticket, a younger woman, compared the score to that by Mica Levi's for Under The Skin (2013). Under The Skin's music still haunts me from the beginning of last year and, rather than using cheap effect, its texture hearing it in the cinema added a dense quality to the visual content. The score for Enemy is at times a beautifully considered piece you can admire but it can also feel too deliberate. There is a potential concern with this type of current "oddball" cinema to use a term my mother coined, which Under The Skin stands above but Enemy is dangerously close to, where scenes and events in these films seem more profound and artistically brilliant only because of a shorthand like an industrial throbbing noise is layered over the images rather than a synchronicity between visuals and audio.

From http://www.labutaca.net/imagenes/wp-content/
original/2014_03/enemy-2013-imagen-2.jpg
This issue is the same with the motifs and themes within the film. The spider motif feels arbitrary. Yes, there is the potential metaphor that it represents Adam and Anthony's fear of women, or the tangled webs woven by the narrative, but was it the best implementation to have this metaphor in the first place? As much as it leads to photogenic and poster friendly images, like a spider the size of a kaiju, it feels like excess baggage that doesn't need to be there. The same is with the potential political content. A lecture to Adam's history class, repeated twice, is about how dictatorships deceive the populous. Again, it feels excessive when the inherent idea of the doppelganger is political. Whether Adam and Anthony are the same people or different individuals who become one, it's impossible to fight against a dictatorship if one cannot control the different sides of your being. That and the fact the two could represent the alternative sides of one man, implicating the potential masks worn by people in a society. Finally there is a subplot about a secret sex show club which opens the film. This has more credibility in that it questions the reality of what is going on, or complicates the character of Adam/Anthony depending on how you adjust your thoughts on the film to include the material. Baring in mind that, on another viewing, that all the aspects mentioned in this paragraph could work better when revisited, it feels as if the film doesn't spread its main concerns further enough especially as there's only ninety minutes to work with.

From http://images.ddlvalley.rocks/images/12317218695131663492.png
Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None
Enemy was the first of two projects between Denis Villeneuve and Jake Gyllenhaal. The second film was the Hollywood film Prisoners (2013), with Hugh Jackson, that was released first. Enemy was designed by the director as an antidote for the potential compromises for Prisoners as a more mainstream film. Ironically, Prisoners is the more unconventional film - with a more conventional narrative, the more unconventional content, from Gyllenhaal as a police detective named Loki, or a spine tingling scene involving a room covered with travel cases on the floor, it becomes more striking as a film. Enemy with its spider motifs and dream sequences mutes its own energy with its upfront oddness. This is a matter of opinion, but the term 'weird' doesn't only mean the strange and bizarre, but that which suggests the supernatural or eerie. Enemy is a good film, but its mood and tone which is significant for my rating gauge as well as content, and Enemy doesn't have anything, for all its unconventional imagery, that is inherently abstract.

From http://www.chud.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Enemy-2.jpg
Personal Opinion:
Enemy is my first viewing experience for 2015. I've decided to concentrate on those so called "oddball" films, like Enemy, or films I have a minimum of a high interest in to see at a cinema or at all, because I want to be frugal with money, even if I was a rich man, and as a cineaste, you don't have to confirm it by watching films for the sake of it. So I start with Enemy, wide eyed from how good Prisoners was, with the hope for an abstract movie par excellence. Frankly, it fits between being an underrated work of interest, a slow burner, and a minor work of immense interest. The expectation for it, the promise, is always a problem when encountering a film that doesn't immediately stand out, and has flaws to it, the emotion flippant. I cannot help but compare Enemy to many films in the same company - Lynch, Cronenberg, countless mindbenders - and it does feel minor in comparison in my mind as it is currently.

Wednesday 14 January 2015

Videotape Swapshop Review: Meet The Feebles (1989)

From http://img.soundtrackcollector.com/
movie/large/Meet_the_Feebles.jpg

Dir. Peter Jackson

Now for something perverse. I am disappointed with the direction Peter Jackson went with his career - high budget Hollywood films that feel too clean and overdone in design. I cannot help but look back at his early splatstick films and admire their politically incorrect, low budget genre content more so. Meet the Feebles is the more divisive film of the group that consists of three films - as Bad Taste (1987) and Braindead (1992) can be enjoyed as gooey splatter horror films, Meet the Feebles is far more rancid and coarse, a parody of the Muppets that is entirely about the most lurid content possible. It feels grimy and for the better for it.

From http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Ulb0pLBgRCw/hqdefault.jpg
Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None
While the sight of puppets, including human sized ones that are brought to life by people in costumes, engaging in anything from drugs, sex, suffering from sexually transmitted diseases, violence and various forms of taboo is startling, it's not inherently strange to witness. Its concern is with bad taste, to quote the title of Jackson's first film, not being weird. That's not an issue for me at all as instead this belongs at the top of the Tasteless Rating scale if one was ever created. It doesn't detract from the shock of witnessing the content as, with my dark sense of humour, I also found it hilarious.

From http://www.nzfilm.co.nz/sites/nzfc/files/styles/film-promotional-image/
public/images/films/promotional-images/MEET%20THE%20FEEBLES1.jpg?itok=GieFSbMf
Personal Opinion:
For the full Videotape Swapshop review, follow the link here.

Tuesday 6 January 2015

Summing Up 2014 in First Time Watches Part 3

From http://www.nina.gov.pl/images/nina_czolowka_archiwum1
/walerian_borowczyk_595_tmobile.jpg?sfvrsn=2
Best Discovery:
Winner: Walerian Borowczyk

Honourable Mentions: Guy Maddin; Jean Rollin; Fukui Shozin; Alain Robbe-Grillet; Douglas Sirk; Yuasa Masaaki

"Best Discovery" is open to many things, but in this it was all directors, some of them who I have encountered before, but I've properly introduced myself to this time this year. Every one of them have shown themselves to be ones I'll hold onto greatly. I admit a greater emphasis, and preference in the unconventionality of the creators is celebrated in this selection - Rollin's and Robbe-Grillet's forms of surrealism, Maddin's tributes to classic cinema by way of cinematic alchemy, Fukui's urban brutality - there is yet also the emotional highs of Douglas Sirk, far from an ironic director, and Yuasa, a deeply neglected director in terms of access to his work who brings high concepts and emotional depth together in anime whilst able to depict the unexpected and be humorous too.

The winner is the one I was spurred to view his films with immense interest, through the campaign of DVD company Arrow, already succeeding in a small way to boost his critical reputation, before he became obscured by time, through making me a convert.  I now look on to seeing as much of Borowczyk's filmmaking as possible thanks to their hard work and looking for short films online before their releases were even fully restored to put on physical media. With all these directors, each work, even flawed ones, still contribute to a portrait to them, but every film and short, animated or live action, I've watched of Borowczyk's have all been great, from drastically re-evaluating The Beast (1975) to seeing gems like Blanche (1971) for the first time. Even a film like Emmanuelle 5 (1987), the infamous last film he made, the one that marred his career probably more than making erotic art movies, is still better than most director's films regardless of how cheese ball it is and that most of the film was probable filmed by someone else. He was a man who was able to juggle stop motion animation, reminiscent to Jan Svankmajer's but, rather than texture, his obsession was with the form of them, with live action drama with the same level of imagination and inspiration.

The apparent success with Arrow's campaign has led to Docteur Jekyll et les femmes (1981), a film lost in right issues for many years, to finally be accessed within 2015, and one can only hope the older Polish short animations and the late seventies work onwards get as much care and devotion from them or other groups. After Immoral Tales (1974) and The Beast, Borowczyk would fully dive into the divisive erotic era of his career that led to his drop in critical standing, which leads to a fascinating question for a new fan of the late auteur's work to be asked - what films within this era are potential hidden gems awaiting to be rediscovered? The first feature film I saw for this year was Emmanuelle 5 anyway, and if that didn't put me off, then there's bound to be great films in his later career.

From http://www.regrettablesincerity.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/white3b.jpg
Best Director:
Winner: White of the Eye (Donald Cammell, 1987)

Honourable Mentions: Like Someone in Love (Abbas Kiarostami, 2012); The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford, 1962); Kemonozume (Masaaki Yuasa, 2006/Anime Series); Careful (Guy Maddin, 1992)

Like with the previous category for this post, all the following stand out for something specific, which considering the numerous choices I could've had, made this difficult to choose. To make it easier, I only choose one film per person, though for the most part, any other films or works I saw from those mentioned were just as rewarding and brought up in another section. The ability to turn a small drama into something profound through Kiarostami's skill; an emotionally rich western from John Ford; Yuasa taking a conventional, repeated and usually tedious anime series plot line and turning it into something strange, unconventional, and in the best way, effecting for a work that, for all its monsters, is more about a love story between two people who shouldn't logically be able to fall in love; and the film, while his third, that brought Guy Maddin to attention, where he was not put off having never seen an actual mountain film like those made in 1920s Germany by making his own, painted in faded postcard colours about the psychological mindsets of the people in the mountainside as much as about the danger of a landside taking place if someone utters a word louder than a whisper.

Just for the chutzpah, how unnerving and different from any other film it feels, I'm willing to put Donald Cammell even over John Ford, for the fact that White of the Eye does exist, a rift on the American serial killer film that splits into spiritual and psychological content that disturbs the clichés immensely. That Cammell was unable to make more than four films and a short over three decades is saddening seeing a film that pulsates like it, but White of the Eye is still there and, finally able to be seen, it's a startling film to exist.

Also nominated for this reward includes Douglas Sirk for All That Heaven Allows (1955); Walerian Borowczyk for Goto, Island of Love (1968), Jacques Rivette for La Belle noiseuse (1991); Ichikawa Kon for An Actor's Revenge (1963); King Vidor for The Crowd (1928); Kawase Naomi for Shara (2003), with an added note that 1) the rain soaked festival parade sequence was a highlight, and 2) anyone who films themselves giving birth for real onscreen, directing and in a role in said film, is placing themselves in front of the camera with an openness you could only see shown by directors like Stan Brakhage, and probably more so then him, that is rare; Alexander Mackendrick for the Sweet Smell of Success (1957); Theodoros Angelopoulos for Alexander The Great (1980); Michael Curtiz for Young Man With A Horn (1950); Mario Bava for Rabid Dogs (1974); Rouben Mamoulian for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931); Joel and Ethan Coen for Barton Fink (1991); Jafar Panahi for Crimson Gold (2003); Paolo and Vittorio Taviani for Caesar Must Die (2012); Marco Ferreri for Dillinger Is Dead (1969); Jean-Louis van Belle for The Sadist With Red Teeth (1971); Douglas Sirk for The Tarnished Angels (1957); Derek Jarman for The Last of England (1988); F.W. Murnau for Phantom (1922); Tengiz Abuladze for Repentance (1984); Fukui Shozin for Rubber's Lover (1996); Raoul Ruiz for City of Pirates (1984); Terayama Shuji for Throw Away Your Books, Rally In The Streets (1971); Jean Renoir for French Cancan (1954); and Jurj Herz for Morgiana (1972).

From http://deviantrobot.com/images/content/10359beast.jpg
Best Re-Watched and Reappraised Film:
Winner: The Beast (Walerian Borocyzk, 1975)

Honourable Mentions: Baise-Moi (Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh, 2000); Salome (Carmelo Bene, 1972); Burn After Reading (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2008)

Sometimes, you dismiss, even hate, a film on the first viewing, only for many years later, or a shorter period of time after, to give it another chance and discover the mistake you made, realise and understand what the director(s) were going for, or that you were blind to the original point within them. Unlike films that you'll never return to, something nags at you, an image or a moment stays in memory, suggesting that something better than in films you'd usually praise existed in one you thought you hated. Burn After Reading was once, like for many, a disappointment for me from the Coens, just for the anti-ending which I felt completely undermined the film's point in existing. But A Serious Man (2009), their film after, not only turned me to becoming a Coen brothers fan, but became an inexplicable Rosetta stone for their whole filmography, the levels of absurdity, coincidence and fate being played out of the characters' control obvious even in the straight forward genre films. A deeply funny film now, this turns that anti-ending into the most appropriate and one of the darkest in the directors' filmography, more so then No Country For Old Men (2007) and their apparent serious films. Set within Washington and made during George W. Bush's presidency, this also becomes the political satire in the Coen's career, but rather than choose cheap rhetoric for either left or right wing politics, the brothers instead offer that stupidity is writ large, pointlessness is inevitable in most circumstances, and barring the female figures, Frances McDormand's and Tilda Swinton's characters,  who for their flaws are the only intelligent people against most of the males, everyone is doomed to failure. Because of another film of the directors', it means Burn After Reading gains a new context in hindsight.

Salome was reconsidered just for how many images were stuck with me long after viewing it for a year or more so. Comparable in its grotesqueness to the more extreme, corporal flourishes of Pier Paolo Pasolini, and the hyper-fantastical sets of Federico Fellini but with an artificiality of a film like Pink Narcissus (1971) and a hypractive, loud presentation that is entirely its own, my only Carmelo Bene film viewing belongs to an area of cinema, in Bene, deprived from us as film fans in easy to access forms, but if it was if Salome is to be attested to, it would open a new room in what you could do with cinema. A take on the titular story where large men affectively smear grapes and wines on themselves rather than actually eat it, rubbing their faces into nude women's forms, surrounded by Roman decoration if done by a Las Vegas casino or an proto-eighties nightclub from an American action film long before the eighties was in utero. Salome herself is both strangely beautiful, yet with her completely shaved head and giant proportioned eyes and lips, looks like an alien in her own existence, the centre of a barrage of extravagance between beauty and utter camp that takes place, from fruit bowls to jewellery being fetishised, to flesh of both genders being lusted over in Soviet montage editing. And then there's the image that burnt itself into my mind so deeply it led me to return to the film, a man crucifying himself, with a hammer and nails, with his own hands. If Bene's films were easier for me to see, he may likely take the jump up along with the Borowczyks and Fukuis as a mind searing discovery I hold highly.

Baise-Moi was once, back in college when I was eighteen, the worse film I claimed to have seen, a pretty embarrassing statement in hindsight, but the reason was because I was expected a nihilistic Thelma and Louise type of film, having still never seen Thelma & Louise (1991) mind you, but got something that was just completely misanthropic about the entirety of mankind. Revisiting it for the first time for at least over six years, with a vastly different viewpoint and preferences to cinema, it still has flaws, poor music cues being chosen the biggest, but it feels vital and a necessary purge of rage to view. It feels like, as a male viewer, the metaphorical equivalent of being castrated seeing it, which feels completely justifiable, and the film gains immediately more recognition from me, from the worst I've seen to one that I will gladly defend, and maybe hold more and more highly the more times I see it, from the decade of pretentious transgressive films from male directors that came after it, including  from France, that made the need by two female directors, with their two female leads, to make a film with hardcore sex, gruesome yet "cool" violence and a punk, raw aesthetic to blast standards of good taste from women's viewpoints. In hindsight to how issues of censorship and treatment of sexuality, and women's rights, are still sour in the new decade, a film like Baise-Moi feels like a necessary charge against perceived morality ahead of its time. The only reason it doesn't get the reward, because going from the worst film you've seen to a vital film to see is a one-of-a-time moment, is because of Walerian Borowczyk's The Beast.

Like Baise-Moi, when I viewed The Beast I was an easily offended, little twerp who would rather watch an overrated movie like The Usual Suspects (1995) than a film that was actually good. I kid a little, but it's amazing how I've managed to become more transgressive in my tastes instead of more conservative one from a teenager to an adult when it's usually the other way around. This was the year Nekromantik (1987) finally was released in the United Kingdom, a film that people were amazed was ever released, but I was not shocked by anything in it at all, and as I will write of later I am mortified that anyone would be offended to the point of banning the film in the first place regardless of whether it was a good film or not. The Beast, revisiting it, left my jaw on the seating area I was on, and is even more shocking in this era.

It also turns out to be utterly hilarious. Somehow twisting Luis Bunuel's style of satire, which is amazing to actually consider, The Beast is gleefully perverse and, in the end, what it celebrates is this perversity while mocking the apparent moral guardians with their questionable behaviour, an obvious idea but not when there is prolonged woman and beast sex in the woods that ends with both participants in orgasmic bliss. For me personally, we are still trying to deal with the transgressive films made in the seventies, because many have managed to still be shocking and more so now, like Sweet Movie (1974), and there are films like Terayama Shūji's Emperor Tomato Ketchup (1971) that I am understandably hesitant to see even if it is seen as a piece of art, the boundaries these films pushed having become more restricted and troubling for many now. The irony, when a film like Nekromantik gets a release only now, is that a film we've had uncut since the early 2000s still have a greater edge because The Beast has a mindset that feels sadly lost, one potentially more progressive than our supposedly harmonious one now, a film I can get in my local HMV but whose ideals are ignored for the worst in us. And it's not a lie how hilarious this is - I had no idea how funny this was, either because I have a sick, weird sense of humour, or I rarely see a film that actually goes for the throat, not with nihilism, but with utter delight in its decadence.

From http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vWmrbuOodWQ/UF3YZuVrLyI/
AAAAAAAACaQ/1zcFbOgXsMg/s1600/kmnzum3-2.png
Best Anime (TV Series/Straight-To-Video/Film etc.):
Winner: Kemonozume (Yuasa Masaaki, 2006/Anime Series)

Honourable Mentions: Kaiba (Yuasa Masaaki, 2008/Anime Series); Midori (Harada Hiroshi, 1992); The Visions of Escaflowne (Akane Kazuki, 1996/Anime Series); FLCL (Tsurumaki Kazuya, 2000)

I must thank one man from the internet, who goes as Nrh on multiple sites, as he is directly responsible for me being able to see two entries in this category. If he is reading this, thank you, which I mean with utmost sincerity. How Yuasa Masaaki's work is not more available in the West baring for the lucky anime fans in Australia is baffling, considering the cult growing him and his contribution to the popular cult animation Adventure Time. The other peculiar aspect, remarkably in this case, is how Kemonozume when from being the weakest of the three TV series I've seen of his, alongside Kaiba and The Tatami Galaxy (2010), to his best. Probably because what looks like a potentially ramshackle, weird for the sake of weird story whose plot has been found in countless other anime, it turns out to be the one that takes the bigger risks, the more idiosyncratic, from its "sketchy" animation style including some live action inserts, its willingness to be gory and erotic, its greater emotional gamble, more emotional than even Kaiba surprisingly, and the inherent weirdness, from a villain wearing Mickey Mouse ears to our hero having a training montage with a monkey as his sensei, one that doesn't even talk.

Out of all of them, the emotional depth is the brightest, the willingness to have an end where loved characters actually die, where the central Romeo and Juliet like story, but with sexual and mature adults, has a real romance rather than the stick figures anime fans usually have to put up with. Kaiba, though, was a great way to continue on, the next series he did chronologically, smart and intelligent sci-fi, which goes as far as briefly subverting gender alongside its ideas of memories and their importance, one of the only anime series where a single twenty or so minute episode both felt like a full story  for me and, in a character we only see in that particular and never see again, manages to break your heart, more so when they live on in an unexpected way. Its look and style, its music, its conclusion in just twelve episodes to work, all of it makes it beautiful and it's amazing its seen as a difficult work, one which puts people watching it or apparently for it to get a English language DVD release. The Australians should be praised for their good taste.

Midori is a true difficult anime. Never officially released in its home country, not necessarily banned, only able to be seen by its creator's request if shown at the end of an elaborate carnival. Made entirely by himself independently, and back when anime was handdrawn, with contribution in the music. The original film print likely lost. Only available officially on French DVD or online. At only forty or so minutes, it does have to rush itself and undercuts moments of importance, a foul and unsettling period story of a young girl forced to join a travelling freak show in early 1920s Japan, a unique look based on the original manga by Maruo Suehiro, with moments that will just cause mortified horror to appear on viewers' faces. But it is elegant and for all its taboos broken, it's a dark, unsettling tale where, regardless of the cruelty shown, we feel sympathy continually for the titular protagonist while the freaks, the magicians and ringleaders all clash with each otherand the world is completely unfair to Midori by pure accident. The nihilism, more than the content, is the really unsettling aspect that makes it a bitter, if magnificent achievement, to swallow.

The Visions of Escaflowne started out as a potential disappointment - a serial like structure for a fantasy, dragons and swords but with added giant robots for knights to pilot, always undercutting its drama because I knew the characters would escape it unscathed. But halfway through, it grew on me, a strong female protagonist who, even on the sidelines, is still in the centre, a potential romance triangle between her and two male heroes that becomes tangled and complicated, and side characters including villains who have something behind them all to lead them forwards, with some complexity to the relationships. It's a rare, sadly rare, thing to have storytelling too that is well written and interesting like this in a twenty six episode anime series, having sat through some tedious series that were only half that length let alone the same. Only by the ending did I realise how much of a great romp the series was, and the re-release for the UK on DVD expected for the later months of this year cannot feel like an eternity to wait for. Finally, FLCL, an erratic, difficult to follow work, but exactly like Escaflowne, it was only at the end I appreciated how well made it was, how memorable the characters were, and how openly unconventional and refreshing it felt in style. It's not a surprise it became a gateway work for new fans and got people excited, because it was utterly fun to watch whilst taking huge aesthetic risks anime doesn't do enough of. And if Kemonozume wins for best opening credit theme, FLCL, despite the tough fight with Kaiba, gets best ending credits and end credit song mini-award.

One anime unfortunately left out was Gyo: Tokyo Fish Attack (Hirao Takayuki, 2012). Rotting fish robot hybrids. Sharks with legs. The strangest, and unexpected, type of sex scene I've seen all year, and a type of out-there content throughout it that makes it's the closest to the straight-to-video anime of the nineties and eighties in a long time for me to see, something you don't get anymore. Most I've seen that try to recapture it, whether it would be good in large doses or not, have not had the mad energy this has, which is as much because, being from the same manga author, Ito Junji, of Uzumaki (1998-9), it was already unconventional before being animated. The notion there is a work, based on a manga, which features sharks with legs and it actually depicts it as many would hope it would be done is an achievement in itself.

From https://kultguyskeep.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/rabid-dogs-4.jpg?w=604
Best Cult Film:
Winner: Rabid Dogs (Dir. Mario Bava, 1974)

Honourable Mentions: Careful (Dir. Guy Maddin, 1992); The Swimmer (Dir. Frank Perry, 1968); Rubber’s Lover (Fukui Shozin, 1996); Gone In 60 Seconds (H.B. Halicki, 1974)

Amongst the films considered as well were Matango: Attack of the Mushroom People (1963), a story about survivors on an island growing to hate each other that just happens to be a Toho monster movie as well involving mushroom men;  The Beast (1975) which has already been praised enough; Dreadnaught (1981), one of the most imaginative and elaborate martial arts films in existence; Roger Corman's Edgar Allen Poe adaptation The Tomb of Ligeia (1964); and two that have a lot to say about, Oriental Blue (1975) and Nekromatik (1988). Oriental Blue is the first porno film I've seen that isn't an art film. When porn is usually clips, to see a full narrative feature is something very different. It's amazing to see a film that is actually well made and has some cinematic flourish! It's amazing to see despite the scuzz and its plot it is a porn film you shouldn't be ashamed to watch even if its got 42nd Street New York grim all over it. Its amazing Peonies Jong in the lead, despite playing a Fu Manchu villain, manages to be a charismatic woman you want to cheer on despite being the villain. And it's amazing that, even while it may be a distracting concept for someone to act in a scene and have real sex on screen for a lengthy period immediately afterwards, she and everyone, male and female, is someone who you want to watch onscreen, with a hell of a lot more personality than what even softcore actors have now. The film also has the least expected, and dumbfounding, appropriation of a pre-existing score, which means I will never be able to listen to the music from Enter The Dragon (1973) the same way again.

Nekromatik's release in the UK is a wonderful thing, but having watched it and not been shocked at all, it leads me to shake my head in disbelief about the reactions it got in the first place. Yes, I understand if people find the ideas being shown, including the central one involving necrophilia, to be disgusting and offensive to them, because such ideas are not pleasant things for many to even picture or see done with DIY practical effects, but as a no-budget film its director openly admits was improvised in its creation, the idea that the film is still controversial, is banned in Iceland, and was even controversial back when it was  first released to be an utter embarrassment for the species. That obvious, if great, practical effects, artistic image distortions which disrupts the strength of the infamous sex scenes, and an arty tone was seen as moral degeneracy, it shows a lot of censorship and social outrage up as being pathetic

Especially as, for all the censorship and importations of bootleg Nekromatik videotapes that were likely destroyed by British customs, the cult that has surrounded this film in the UK, and that its survived longer than most censorship campaigns from when it was first made, its an ironic, if fitting, revenge we get the film in a lavish, celebratory home media release. Now, having found it not to be disgusting, not even disturbed by the real rabbit killing sequence, having seen abattoir footage in other films and skinned rabbits in butcher shop windows, the film is more of an unconventional romance drama, where the grim and the low budget abstract moments are the more bold and interesting aspects than the mere shock of some of the other content. It comes off as a charming, weird little film, and yes, I realise those are eyebrow raising words to say when the film is partially about necrophilia, but when you have witnessed The Beast, your Baise-Mois, your Sweet Movies, people are terrible for jumping forward to being intentionally offended, and we place offense as a higher priority rather than the point the directors were wanting to make. Nekromatik is more of a satire rather than anything intentionally disgusting, and it'll be a curious site, if we get the sequel its home country of Germany tried to have destroyed, manages to show how arbitrary and slightly sad the controversies around these films may be.

In terms of a cult movie, the ones you'll hold onto have a quality to them, that makes them good, and something at the same time you don't find in conventional films, like those already mentioned and those I choose as honourable mentions. Halicki's Gone In 60 Seconds devoted itself to car chases and feels like it does them better than most. Rubber's Lover was a viscous, energised blast to the senses, reminiscent to Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) but was radically its own creation. The Swimmer is a great drama, but as for many others, it deserves to have that cult tag instead because its decision to depict its metaphor about a man's growing regret by having him swim through people's pools on the way home, and make it a literal metaphorical journey, is something that shouldn't be damped and ignored by naming it as anything else other than a cult film. And Careful is a great film, but Guy Maddin's opus is as in its own existence in tone and presentation as you could get. For the winner, Rabid Dogs, there is the sad fact that, for whatever inexplicable reason, the original cut was not preserved, and without wanting to blame anyone, or blame Mario Bava's son Lamberto, the fact that the only surviving source for the original cut and audio is videotape is both tragic, and knowing how difficult to preserve and fragile videotape is, is going to mean that in decades time, the existence of this original cut on DVD and Blu-Ray is going to be undercut if that surviving source becomes lost itself. But for now, the fact that Rabid Dogs did get a Blu-Ray release, again by itself enough to lionise Arrow as a DVD/Blu-Ray distributor, and is available means you also get to see one of the meanest and cynical Italian genre films that may have been made in the country's hayday for the film production. A film from a man who had to keep up with the new trends in genre cinema, economic and striking in how it's made, in the actors he choose, in being tasteless, and having a sting in its tail that hurts the viewer by the end. That we have it at all is something to be thankful for.

From http://www.loud-clear.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/prince_and_the_
revolution_music_from_purple_rain_1984.jpg
Best Music Album Listened To For The First Time:
Winner: Purple Rain by Prince and The Revolution (1984)

Honourable Mentions: California by Mr. Bungle (1999); Remission by Mastodon (2002); The Seer by Swans (2012); Hounds of Love by Kate Bush (1985)

It's not all about films, and everyone has other hobbies, music a more universally embraced art form. If you dig, you realise that even someone who doesn't like difficult movies can yet enjoy some of the most unconventional and difficult music possible, and the advantage of music in how it effects us when we engage with it means that, barring in mind personal preference, experimentation can be found even in Top 40 hits. Music is an area that needs even more devotion from me as much as cinema, needing to appreciate albums specifically more as, with these examples, a full album can be more rewarding than a single compilation, in contradiction of how CDs are left aside for MP3s for the most part.

I'd thought California by Mr Bungle would be the best, then I realised I never heard Purple Rain in its entirety until this year. As I've said, experimentation can be found in popular songs, and the likes of When Doves Cry is why I say this. Truly a magical experience to listen to, and I cannot hide my desire to see the 1984 film tied to it in its eighties glory. If it wasn't for Purple Rain, it's the Mr. Bungle album that's stayed with me; having now heard the three albums they've made, yet to return as Mike Patton has concentrated on other projects, California feels like the part where, if they continue(d), they'd melded their experimentation and mad genre blending into potential pop hits, songs so catchy whilst retaining their uniqueness that it's sad this album never had singles. Remission, again like Purple Rain, was an album that I never heard in its entirely, but it cements how much Mastodon are one of my favourite bands; they've become much more commercial on their latest album from 2014, but the distinctness of all the albums is in their favour in hindsight, the noisy sludge metal of Remission still able to sting after listening to songs repeatedly by their own. The Seer was my introduction to Swans, an entire dimension of sound that feels like being sucked into a vortex, and my first proper Kate Bush album heard, beautiful music that, again, was able to become popular but is completely experimental and different, especially when it gets to the second half and the Ninth Wave suite.

Also considered was Riitiir (2012) by Enslaved, the other metal album that I feel in love with, which would've gotten a high position if it wasn't against such strong competition, extreme metal that is utterly graceful and mind shearing at the same time; No More Heroes (1977) by The Stranglers, post-punk that is intelligent and is still edgy, with purpose rather than tasteless, after all these decades; The Dark Side of the Moon (1973) and Wish You Were Here (1975) by Pink Floyd, phenomenal peats of rock music, The Great Gig in the Sky for the former and the David Gilmour guitar solos for Shine On You Crazy Diamond audio bliss; Permanent Waves (1980) by Rush, fun prog rock; Heartbreaker (1973) by Free, beautiful soulful rock; Peace Sells...But Who's Buying (1986) by Megadeth, metal with a real snark and bite rather than adolescent whining; Drama (1980) and 90125 (1983) by Yes, the former great prog rock, the later an incredible surprise, a slide to a more commercial pop prog album that yet is made into real, good music; and John Zorn's 1989 Naked City album, the demented yet strangely fitting match of grindcore and abstract jazz, which somehow manages to have one of the best covers of the James Bond theme just behind the surf rock version by Japanese band Surf Champlers.

From http://notonbluray.com/blog/wp-content/uploads
/2013/05/Liberty-Valance-Horse.png
Best Film:
Winner: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford, 1962)

Honourable Mentions: Goto, Island of Love (Walerian Borowczyk, 1969); White of the Eye (Donald Cammell, 1987); Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick, 1957); Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets (Terayama Shūji', 1971)

Goto, Island of Love is my favourite film of the year, but with what is going to be talked about in the next and last award, for this penultimate one I'm going to give the spotlight to another film that truly deserves it, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance a western per excellence for its emotional depth without losing the excitement of the western or the good nature humour. Made in the early sixties as well, there it is fitting that, as the late sixties would be where new innovations, new boundaries broken and new directors and movements came to be, the veterans of the older generations, like John Ford, were still able to cement incredible films like this one as their last works or so in the early sixties. Goto, Island of Love will be talked about soon, a one-two discovery I can thank Arrow DVD releases for alongside White of the Eye. Sweet Smell of Success was a film that I knew as being critically important, but finally seeing it, it is not only a film I hear is a masterpiece but I feel and agree is a masterpiece, surprised by how good they really mean it to be. And Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets was a vast, overwhelming mass of politics, stylistic flourishes, documentary against fiction material, and overriding rock music that feel vitalizing. The lack of Terayama Shūji'films available in an assessable form is irritating, but if you can find this film, it's a one-off experience.

Films also considered, and all the following are incredible films you should see, are All That Heaven Allows (1955); Caesar Must Die (2012); the experimental documentary Leviathan (2012); the experimental animation An Optical Poem (1937) by Oskar Fischinger; Upstream Color (2013); the entirety of Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Trilogy of Life - The Decameron (1971), The Canterbury Tales (1972) and Arabian Nights (1974) - willingly to cheat including this, since I've seen The Canterbury Tales many years ago, because the entirety of the trilogy seen together, in any order, adds to all three films when placed together; La Belle noiseuse (1991)Sanjuro (1962); Alexander The Great (1980); The Beast (1975); The Nude Vampire (1970); Young Man with a Horn (1950); Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931); Like Someone in Love (2012); Shara (2003); Barton Fink (1991); the important experimental short Ballet mécanique (1924); anime television series Kemonozume (2006), even if it contradicts the award's title; Rabid Dogs (1974); Medea (1969); French Cancan (1954); and The Tarnished Angels (1957).

From http://stigmatophiliablog.files.wordpress.com/2014/09
/vlcsnap-2014-09-25-11h29m30s38.png
Best Cinema of the Abstract Film:
Winner: Goto, Island of Love (Walerian Borowczyk, 1969)

Honourable Mentions: White of the Eye (Donald Cammell, 1987); The Nude Vampire (Jean Rollin, 1970); Horrors of Malformed Men (Ishii Teruo, 1969); Rubber’s Lover (Fukui Shozin, 1996)

Considering the blog's name, it would be fitting to end with the films that feel the most appropriate for this blog, those that would represent the theme of the blog perfectly. Barring two honourable mentions, White of the Eye and Rubber's Lover which I have written reviews for, every one of the following are worth covering at some point. Goto, Island of Love is the perfect representative because, while not the most abstract or odd of the candidates, it's the best in terms of quality and in terms of depicting something never seen on screen before or after, a different world set in a kingdom where most of its landmass is gone, one with familiarities to the viewer's but also very different. The winner and the four honourable mentions are all films which feel radically different from convention, in mood inherently off-kilter while yet avoiding the wacky and the ironically weird in favour of being serious, even when the content is ridiculous.  From an island where everyone seems to have a first name beginning with G, where everything is run down yet elegant within this decay, the American desert town landscape of the eighties as a serial killer stalks around it, or France as envisioned through pulp literature and erotic vampires, the films create environments with their own rules of cinema that cause them to become bolder and instantly memorable. Be it the delirium of the erotic-grotesque-nonsense of Horrors of Malformed Men to the industrial cyberpunk delirium of Rubber's Lover, these films prickle and scorch with energy that, even if they are as quiet aesthetically as a mouse, radiates as you view them.

Amongst those considered as well is the metaphorical swimming pool-as-journey drama The Swimmer (1968); the esoteric sci-fi realist drama Upstream Color (2013); ID (2005), aka. Ido, the second and last film by Tetsuo, The Iron Man star and co-cinematographer Fujiwara Kei, a ramshackle mess about the id, rage, comedic Three Stooges interludes and the director herself turning into a pig humanoid monster but, like an obscure prog rock album, still layers itself with great moments amongst the erratic overall content; the perversity that is The Beast (1975); Leviathan (2012) an experimental documentary set on a fishing boat that goes as far as having the camera upside down on the front for a long amount of time amongst its other scenes; Dillinger Is Dead (1969), where gas mask producer Michel Piccoli gets bored one night, paints a gun red with polka dots, makes a lot of food and starts wondering why he's putting up with the life he has; Ballet mécanique (1924), a avant-garde quilt of shapes and moving images whose original score, which was too complicated to add until within the Millennium, is just as dense with everything from sirens to propellers. Matango: Attack of the Mushroom People (1963), with its literal mushroom trip; Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets (1971), a time capsule of Japan in the early seventies; City of Pirates (1984), the late Raoul Ruiz's meshing of various stories surrounding a female protagonist, from a mass murdering child to a man who has an entire family for multiple personalities, that I flat out despised and thought was a pretentious bore for the first half but through the second half became a great surrealist journey when I gave into its logic; Guy Maddin's take on a mountain movie Careful (1992), plus his melodrama Archangel (1990), about a town that still believes World War I is still being fought, and The Saddest Music In The World (2003), where Isabella Rossellini is at one point, as someone with no legs, given two glass ones filled with beer as a token of affection; Kemonozume (2006), an anime series about a human in a group meant to kill monsters who falls in love with one of these monsters and run off together; John Turturro getting desperate in front of a typewriter in Barton Fink (1991); and finally the metaphysical pulp romp that is Alain Robbe-Grillet's Eden and After (1970), although frankly all the films that were released in the Alain Robbe-Grillet DVD (orBlu-Ray) box set the British Film Institute released can all qualify together as one legion-like entity. Every one of these films together in one last reflection back on 2014, along with the entirety of this end of year project, combined into one strange, multi-coloured band of great cinema and I cannot complain I wasted a whole year when I saw such films.

Thursday 1 January 2015

Summing Up 2014 in First Time Watches Part 2

From http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_n35PfUpWyak/TB5uaoX5ccI/
AAAAAAAAWXU/rdy6GcYsanw/s1600/Killing+Car+3.JPG
Biggest Surprise (Cult Film)
Winner: Killing Car (Jean Rollin, 1993)

Honourable Mentions: Tomb of Ligeria (Roger Corman, 1964); Dead & Buried (Gary Sherman, 1981); Matango: Attack of the Mushroom People (Honda Ishirô, 1963); Smoke & Flesh (Joseph Mangine, 1968)

An underrated Corman film that nearly becomes an Italian genre film with an unhinged Vincent Price performance; a Video Nasty that stands out as an underrated gem from the 1984 Video Recording Act controversy; a truly weird film from Godzilla and sci-fi director Honda that's a survivors on an island psychological drama that just happens to involve mushroom people; and a hippy drug movie that yet is lovable, has jaw droppingly good cinematography and one of the most erotic scenes you can find in an American exploitation movie. All of them were those little, unsung gems that, flaws and all, stood out with a level of quality that meant more with how they don't get talk about as much as they should be. The winner is probably one of the obscurest Jean Rollin films I've seen, one of the least conventional both for stepping out of his usual horror cinema into a crime drama narrative and being very unconventional by his standards of how to present it, a story of a woman seemingly killing random people with a handgun that is utterly unique.

Also considered: the low budget slasher Unhinged (1982), The Strange Saga of Hiroshi the Freeloading Sex Machine (2005); the playfully peculiar The Sadist With Red Teeth (1971); Madhouse (1981) and The Slayer (1982), two Video Nasties that for their flaws had things that stood out, the former for a surprisingly raw emotional thread in a certain plot event, the later for its dreamlike tone and unsettling ending; The Mutilator (1985), which despite its silly failures, is one of the first slasher films where I felt what excitement slasher film fans have viewing them; and Accoin Mutante (1993), which is well regarded, but its amazing to witness the madness the film contains the first time.

From http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/
wp-content/uploads/2014/04/LikeSomeoneinLove.jpg
Biggest Surprise (Art and Mainstream Film)
Winner: Like Someone In Love (Abbas Kiarostami, 2012)

Honourable Mentions: Nightbirds (Andy Milligan, 1970); Duck Season (Fernando Eimbcke, 2004)

While Like Someone In Love has had great critical acclaim, it's also been seen as a lesser Kiarostami or the one he started to lose people with, not preparing me for how good the film actually is. A simple three person drama, a tiny story, is given a elliptical style that creates a great emotional depth. Like Jean Renoir's The River (1951) what seems very simplistic hides an incredible weight under the surface in terms of the emotions the characters have and what is not shown to the viewer onscreen. Countless scenes, including the abrupt and violent ending, still stick with me, emphasising how more and more I want to hold Kiarostami in high regard.

In terms of honourable mentions, there is the quirky Mexican comedy drama Duck Soup, a film I long remembered reading of in a film magazine a decade ago as a young lad, and my introduction to the infamous Andy Milligan, discovering not only do I like his stereotypical horror work with The Body Beneath (1970), the material that people dismiss his for, but he also made a barnstormer of a misanthropic drama that is legitimately great.

From http://p0.storage.canalblog.com/05/59/110219/48402606.png
From http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6UOEMcR6L7s/TakqBfXvTnI/
AAAAAAAACCE/YEdqfgRvFHU/s1600/drums-along-the-mohawk.jpg

Special Mention
Winner(s): Donovan's Reef/Drums Along The Mohawk (John Ford, 1963/1939)

Honourable Mentions: Chameleon Street (Wendell B. Harris Jr., 1989); The Stray Cat Rock DVD/Blu-Ray release (1970-71); The Tempest (Derek Jarman, 1979); Suzhou River (Lou Ye, 2000)

For those films that'll be neglected in other categories. The one and only film by Wendell B. Harris Jr that crammed enough talent to fill a few films. The Arrow release of an entire series that even the US doesn't have barring one of the films on Region 1 DVD - while its far from the pinki violence genre as I thought they would be, and a limited edition only which is disappointing in terms of getting people interested in it, the series was nonetheless an interesting time capsule to Japanese early seventies b-movies and manages to be fun, playful and still manage to pull out moments of real drama for all the camp. The late Derek Jarman's contribution to Shakespeare that includes one of the most openly flamboyant endings for any film, makes a story as fantastical as The Tempest still as vivid in a set that many would view as a hindrance, and emphasises how subversive Jarman was as a director as he was an artist. And a mystery/romance/crime film from China with possible supernatural touches that has stuck with me.

The winner(s) have to be the other two John Ford films I saw this year, both the kind of movies I would've dismissed as a younger guy but are great films to me now. Ford's humanity, behind the masculinity, is his greatest virtue, where the stoic men can still feel emotion even if they keep to their desired goals and stand tall. Out of both films, Donovan's Reef is the superior, though I put them as one winner, in that what is such an indulgent film, one of Ford's last, a comedy drama of men drinking and romancing and fighting, set in Hawaii with the potential for crass stereotyping, turns out to be such an empathetic movie where every character onscreen has a lot to love about them while having fun with the comedy, a deeply humanist film masquerading as a slapstick series of comedy errors and drunken fighting.


Moment of the Year
Winner: The Eleanor car chase (Gone In 60 Seconds (H.B. Halicki, 1974))

Honourable Mentions: "Imprisoned memories prowl thro' the dark. Fuck it. They scatter like rats..." (The Last of England (Derek Jarman, 1988)); The phone messages in the taxi (Like Someone In Love (Abbas Kiarostami, 2012)); The supermarket sequence (Tout Va Bien (Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin, 1972)); Dragging the rock through a crowded city street (964 Pinocchio (Fukui Shozin, 1991))

It's worth discussing other memorable moments in films I've seen this year, not necessarily the best films but those incidences, scenes or aspects that stood out, from amusement to awe, because everyone, while only one can win, were worth watching through some dire and tedious movies. Even the silliest were why I still watch films. The small details that stand out long after seeing the movies, like a camera shot from within a person's head, looking out the open mouth, in the late Raul Ruiz's City of Pirates (1984), which dumbfound you in their imagination. Those visceral jolts like the final psychic attack depicted in Rubber's Lover (1996), in an apartment where violent and the beautiful image of snow inexplicably falling indoors, in violent monochrome, which shock you. When a film that dissapoints it what it doesn't promise in the title, Werewolves On Wheels (1971), makes up for it in the brief moment you get at least one werewolf riding a motorcycle and they're on fire at the same time. The supernatural moment in Alexander the Great (1980) involving a statue head covered in blood that sent a chill down my spine, or the sudden moment in Jean Rollin's zombie film The Grapes of Death (1978) where two characters suddenly argue about the rural versus industry, a great cult film suddenly pulling out a moment that you'd never to see and hear, and is surprisingly profound for a lurid genre film. When films pay tribute to cinema, like in Once Upon A Time In China III (1993), or reference other art forms like the replication of Surrealist paintings in Alain Robbe-Grillet's La Belle Captive (1983). They can come out of nowhere, like one of the most pulse racing and erotic scenes I've seen, in the exploitation drug film Smoke & Flesh (1968) with two charismatically believable people and whipped cream, they can set up how good a film is going to be, like the first murder in White of the Eye (1987), or in the case of seeing two mannequin heads starting to talk in the beginning of Herschel Gordon Lewis' The Gruesome Twosome (1967), that a director that never believed his films were more than work still has yet contributed some of the most delirious things I've witnessed onscreen and was enjoying said work immensely.

But what of the films that were actually nominated? A single line of monologue, from The Last of England, has been stuck in my head for most of the year, all the anger felt in just a few words, the bile and the regret, expressed perfectly in one choice use of a curse. The economy, in action, seen in Like Someone In Love, involving shots looking out of a taxi and phone messages, that is devastating emotionally and also fills out a character's life for the viewer in a single scene. And there's those elaborate, huge moments in films that stick out triumphantly. Tout Va Bien is a difficult film by Jean-Luc Godard's standards, from the Mao period that divides even fans of his more difficult work, but the supermarket sequence with a camera continuously moving right to left over the tills, in one single take as a riot eventually takes place, could become one of the best moments he devised, shared with Jean-Pierre Gorin in how bold and precisely put together it is. The same, in the maniac lack of precision, is seen in 964 Pinocchio, a film full of potential candidates for this award, seeing real members of the public look on, moving out of the way, on a crowded Japanese street as a man covered in white face paint, with a Mohawk, is running through them with a fake giant rock being dragged behind him on a chain an out-there, exhilarating sight to see.

But the award has to go to one of the longest, if not the longest, car chase in film history, one that has greater meaning knowing the film, one of only three he managed to make, was a passion project for director H.B. Halicki, self funded and willing to potentially sacrifice himself as he is in the car, giving first billing on the opening credits before him or any actor, through the whole series of sequences taking on the risky stunts set up for the movie. Willing to gamble in the many potentially dangerous moments as a car dodges the police, the set piece never becomes repetitive, and while it's not as high octane as modern car chases, the visceral nature of it, including the willingness to weave in images of the damage left in the car chase's wake, humour and overlapping sound, is a masterpiece to see. It still stands up, despite the many decades that have passed, knowing real people drove real cars and how the weight to even a small stunt within the chase is felt especially knowing the risks involved. Film fans, which I am as bad in, can bitch and moan about how good the old days were to the point of rambling, even when we were too young to see said good days in the flesh, but it should be a sane, hundred percent fact that when you see something real, it should be superior than most computer generated fake depictions, the idea that it could be argued for the opposite insane, and comparing a CGI car to a real car being smashed, or jumping in the air off the ramp, it's the later by a country mile that should have more impact on the viewer.

From https://i1.ytimg.com/vi/gTvYi4JEaTo/hqdefault.jpg
The Artefact That Time Forgot
Winner: Ringu: Kanzen-ban (Takigawa Chisui, 1995)

Honourable Mentions: Devil Story (Bernard Launois, 1985); Call Me Tonight (Okamoto Tatsuya, 1986/OVA); Butt Attack Punisher Girl Gautaman: The Birth of Gautaman (Suzuki Iku, 1994/Anime OVA)

The deeper you get into film viewing as a hobby, if you go to the stage of someone who dives into the obscurest waters, you'll encounter some curious oddities along the way. I feel that, to do this special post properly, I need to mention those examples as well. They're not the best films, not even good, but they stand out as the artefacts of the title that should be remembered just for what inexplicably gets creates. Two of the honourable mentions are straight-to-video anime works. One with the title Butt Attack Punisher Girl Gautaman is going to immediately raise eyebrows, especially when it becomes the equivalent of the infamous Nagai Go character Kekko Kamen character but for the derriere  is a take on religious conflict through an evil Black Buddha cult. It really couldn't quality any higher than the bottom rung of the list though because, while it has its own IMDB page, its only the first half of a two part story and the second half seemed impossible for me to find to view, especially sore as the second half is where the anime apparently became utterly insane. If I can find that second half, I may talk about this anime a lot more later down the line. Call Me Tonight is just as peculiar but with a surprising concept - a mocking satire, within the same decade the trope only came into existence alongside straight-to-video anime releases, of tentacle and violent anime porn about a female phone sex operator who helps a man who keeps turning into a tentacle monster every time he gets aroused have a normal sex life. It's not a great work but - as I reviewed here for Videotape Swapshop - it shows how creative anime can be, willing to attack a side of it here that usually damns it to outside critics, and while its a little lurid, having its cake and eating it, its more light hearted and playful by its end with some intelligence to it. Something like Call Me Tonight is unfortunately obscure and only available to see online when it's the kind of one-off that stands out merely for existing.

The other two films are live action and just inexplicable in their existence. The highest honourable mention is a film that just doesn't make any sense, making Jean Rollin films more normal in comparison, in that there is no real connective tissue to link the content of the film, Devil Story, into something easy to digest. A farmer trying to shoot a black horse that may be connected to the evil force that is taking place, stood in a field all night with a never ending supply of shotgun shells to waste missing the equine beast. A deformed man in a Nazi jacket inexplicably killing people like it was a slasher film only the film itself to turn into a gothic horror film for the rest of its length, and even an Egyptian mummy thrown in with no rational explanation. Watched with Greek subtitles burnt into the muddy VHS print I saw, Devil Story legitimately qualifies as an strange item alongside films like Zoo zéro (1979), movies that could never exist anymore that seem alien even to their original eras.

The winner however manages to outdo even Devil Story with its place in an important, beloved pop culture franchise - many, like myself, thought the first film adaptation of Ring was the 1998 version, but there was a 1995 made for TV adaptation. It's said to be the most faithful version of the original novel, which makes how bizarre the result is baffling. Furthering this is that there are softcore sex scenes and nudity in the film, more abrupt in their placement as the "hot" version includes digital blurring for a brief and surprisingly graphic scene between two characters who have no contribution to the main plot. Instead of the growing dread of the Nakata Hideo 1998 version, that kick started a J-horror boom on both sides of the Pacific ocean, it shows that made for TV aesthetic is a universal language with flat images and loud, continuous music, a trippy interpretation of the cursed tape's content, an antagonist who is depicted as a beautiful, voluptuous woman instead of the being in the 1998 version that terrified many, including scenes of her being eroticised, and plot twists taken from the original source material that are dumb and make the significant streamlining of the 1998 version the best thing that may have happened for the source novel. Usually the kind of mishaps you see here are encountered in sequels and continuations of the original film, but for what is a poor film, this is a real oddball in the truest sense that, unlike most of those sequels and entries, was both the first and complicates the renowned franchise that came after it in its existence.

From http://s3.amazonaws.com/criterion-production/images/4221-0d2ae68886a21015002e7b45607d1e9b/AllHeavenAllowsBranches_Current_large.jpg
Best Actress:
Winner: Jane Wyman (All That Heaven Allows (Douglas Sirk, 1955))

Honourable Mentions: Maria Callas (Medea (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1969)); Emmanuelle Béart (La Belle noiseuse (Jacques Rivette, 1991)); Dorothy Malone (The Tarnished Angels (Douglas Sirk, 1957)); Takanashi Rin (Like Someone in Love (Abbas Kiarostami, 2012))

From http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Film/Pix/pictures/
2012/2/20/1329735151909/Caesar-Must-Die--007.jpg
Best Actor(s)
Winner(s): Convicts of Rebibbia Prison (Caesar Must Die (Paolo Taviani, Vittorio Taviani, 2012))

Honourable Mentions: Kirk Douglas (Young Man With A Horn (Michael Curtiz, 1950)); Burt Lancaster (Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick, 1957) & The Swimmer (Frank Perry, 1968)); Hossain Emadeddin (Crimson Gold (Jafar Panahi, 2003)); Vincent Price (Theatre of Blood (Douglas Hickox, 1973) & The Tomb of Ligeia (Roger Corman, 1964))

As someone who admits he neglects acting in films sometimes, yet also believes a good performance is not enough to save a film, there were so many incredible examples this year in first watches, not just in dramas but even in knowingly absurd b-movies. The choices I had to go through also prove that the best performances are found in films where the content around those performances are as distinct and memorable, the actors adding to them in a whole rather than contributing the only thing of note. The huge number of performances to choose from was high to the point that my choice for Best Actress was a last minute inclusion, Jane Wyman, for a film that is said to be Douglas Sirk's best, but whose lack of inclusion in other categories is only because there were other Douglas Sirk films, let alone other films, that were just as good as it in the running. All That Heaven Allows is one of those incredibly well regarded films in an auteur's filmography I don't enjoy as much on the first viewing as an obscure and underrated one, but I can say will grow on me the more I view it. This is especially, if nothing else, for a performance vital to make a character still important to see in the modern day, for the honest fact that a fifties melodrama like it still touches upon a subject that is still an issue today, one that justifiably, seeing it, was continued in versions by Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Todd Hayes to reflect the later decades their versions were made in. Sirk, if anything, got such great performances from actresses, not to mention actors, that I am kicking myself for forgetting and neglecting his films I saw this saw for these acting categories as I write them. But Wyman's is the one that is more than enough to show this through the best example of them all.

For the Best Actor I am going to cheat because there had to be one exception to the usual rules for such a category. Even though many of them qualify as supporting actors logically, the entire group of Rebibbia Prison inmates, shown in the documentary/Shakespeare adaptation hybrid Caesar Must Die, qualify as one whole for me impossible to choose between, both because their performance of Julius Caesar for the film viewer, set within the cells and courtyards they live within every day, are tremendous, but the added meaning of their existence as prisoners, and the added meaning this gives to the play's narrative of betrayal and political strife, creates something wondrous. I am willing to cheat for this award because the whole experience of Caesar Must Die, both the underlining documentary and the quality of the adaptation that makes the film mostly a narrative work, was overwhelming, an utmost sympathy for the convicts shown that make the desired effect for the Taviani Brother's experiment work perfectly.

The one factor that connects both categories, which is emphasised by my dismissal of "Oscar worthy" performances and the notion that a performance is enough to make a film good, is that none of the performances in the honourable mentions for either actors and actresses is in a conventional drama. Especially with the actress category this was clear. The most obvious performance I considered for earnestness was Emily Watson's in Breaking The Waves (1996), not included as a honourable mention, but that was a performance in a Lars von Trier film. The entire honourable mentions section for the actress category goes completely against the perceived notion of what a drama performance should be - a period historical film by Pier Paolo Pasolini where the actress is dubbed yet still gives a compelling performance physically (Callas); a performance where the lengthy dialogue sequences and the numerous scenes where she is completely naked onscreen for prolonged amounts of time is utterly brave, not for the hypocritical idea that being naked or participating in sex acts onscreen is transgressive, even debasing, but that the position inherently means being the centre of the viewer's gaze, as a person and an figure of symbolism, for the plot and the film, one's image stripped away onscreen beyond the flesh and having to make sure she is not made a mere entity, as a character in a performance, as a result (Béart); a performance in an unconventional drama, which has been criticised by Japanese critics for flat acting which, as a non-Japanese speaker, may affect my view of it if I spoke fluent Japanese, from an actress most people will know of in the bloody Indonesian-Japanese crime thriller Killers (2014) in a small role rather than as a known actress (Takanashi); and a performance in the closest thing to a conventional drama, a Douglas Sirk film, which is yet more of a classic, earnest melodrama with a hard, ragged edge that makes the emotions more strong, where it is willing to gamble with being hyper-emotive to the point of absurdity because, rather than being sober and "profound", the drama, done as an entertainment picture, is about heightened passion within a pulpy scenario of airplane races and potential adultery (Malone).

The same is with the Best Actors honourable mentions. Kirk Douglas in an earnest, but powerful role in a noir strained jazz film that feels like it would be more watered down if made now, without said earnestness and the willingness to enjoy the jazz soaked atmosphere shown on screen. Lancaster in two roles, which I've made one nomination, that are not safe choices in current cinema to give awards if one has seen at least one recent Oscar winner, a callous entity in Sweet Smell of Success  who is morally rancid yet you feel sadness in his demonic nature by the end, and a very complex character in The Swimmer, who you sympathise with but is also the bringer of his own misery in a metaphorical journey in a very off-kilter film, both of which he is incredible in. Hossain Emadeddin, in a type of role that gets ignored because acting in non-English roles gets neglected most of the time, feels like a man off the street, a complete amateur who brings his real emotions with him, emphasised by the fact that Crimson Gold is the only acting credit he has, and Vincent Price's gift was only really taken into consideration by genre fans like myself, able to juggle sincere takes on Shakespearian soliloquy, one moment, showing how chewing the scernry is a fine art that only great actors do well, being maniacally evil that you cheer him on, or slowly going mad in a perfect ripeness that he is a sympathetic character even if the being dogging him into misery is a black cat.

Best Actress choices also considered also included: Emily Watson for Breaking the Waves (1996) as mentioned; Lauren Bacall for Written In The Wind (1956), thought I am glad to say I gave her the Best Supporting Actress award in the last part; Julie Shaw in Nightbirds (1970), thumbing my nose up at Andy Milligan detractors; Malgorzata Foremniak in Avalon (2001), a potentially divisive Oshii Mamoru live action film that is helped by someone as interesting in the centre as her, and Susan Harrison in the Sweet Smell of Success (1957).

Best Actor choices also considered include Tony Curtis for Sweet Smell of Success (1957) who would've gotten into the honourable mentions if the competition wasn't as strong as it was; Rock Hudson for both All That Heaven Allows (1955) and Written On The Wind (1956); Robert Stack also for Written On The Wind (1956) and The Tarnished Angels (1957); Charles Laughton for the underrated, if flawed, Jean Renoir film This Land Is Mine (1943); Michel Piccoli for both La Belle noiseuse (1991) and Dillinger Is Dead (1969),  two of the most wildly contrasting films I could've paired together; James Stewart for The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962); Mifune Toshiro for Sanjuro (1962); Fredric March in the Oscar winning role for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931); another potentially controversial choice from Like Someone In Love (2012) with Okuno Tadashi; JeanLouis Trintignant for The Man Who Lies (1968); Berwick Kaler for Nightbirds (1970) and John Turturro for Barton Fink (1991). If anything, this list just proves how much acting means more to me than I originally thought.