Movies

Drown In You

Chill Movies, Video, Video (movie)

One film where I disagreed with Roger Ebert pretty strongly is the bathtub drowning scene in Constantine. He disliked it (and the film) for the same reasons that I love it: the scene is horrible and beautiful. It’s nasty, and not in the sense of any gore or even anything sexual. It’s horrifying what Constantine does to Angela — both his direct actions of bringing her to the edge of death by drowning and what you find out she’s witnessing immediately after. Weisz’s acting when Angela realizes Constantine does not intend to let her up is perfect.

It’s all just so wrong. And that’s what makes it a great scene.

Ebert was not a fan of horror. And it shows in his misassessment of the scene and film.

Presence

Chill Movies, Video, Video (other)

Presence is such a good film. It’s not horror, really, for all you horror haters. It’s more of a psychological thriller with some few horror elements. It’s mostly about misogyny and family dynamics. And it’s shot so beautifully. Probably my favorite film I’ve seen in the last couple of years.

Good analysis of how it was shot. (And wow, Callina is so different than her character Chloe in the film!)

Twin Cut

Chill Movies

Ah what the fuck.

I had no idea. I need to check that commentary out. I knew Linda had an identical twin, but I didn’t know that’s how that shot was created.

Bergh

Chill Movies

I watched the Soderbergh film Presence in the theater earlier today.

It was a good film, but it will be polarizing. If you do not like Soderbergh’s quieter, more introspective works, you probably also will not like this one as it is indeed very Soderberghian.

The performances make the film. The plot is thin, but then that is intentional. The viewpoint is the point in a sense. It is not a horror film, really, but an examination of pointless misogynistic evil and how it reverberates through time.

It also had one of the most uncomfortable scenes I’ve experienced in a movie in a long while. I know this will sound bad, but there’s a part that you’re thinking will be “only” sexual assault — then it moves to something else altogether and you wish it’d go back to the other thing.

Callina Liang both grounds and elevates the film with unexpected depth. The rest of the cast is really good as well.

Recommended.

Ferris of Them All

Chill Movies

Guardian writers on their ultimate feelgood movies: ‘For when humanity lets me down.’

I don’t watch movies this way so I don’t really have a “feelgood” movie as such, but if I had to choose one it’d be Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

It’s just such a fun movie with a perfect tone that blends so much about humanity together incredibly well. The film feels like a pastiche because it is, and works all the better for it.

Phane

Chill Movies

Inventory: 10 January movies better than they have any right to be.

I’ve seen every film on this list (not surprisingly). That is a good one. I’d add these great January dumping ground releases to the list:

1) Fish Tank

2) M3gan

3) Infinity Pool

4) Blackhat

5) Snatch

6) Veronika Decides to Die

7) Impostor

8) Teeth

9) Gleaming the Cube

10) Outrageous Fortune

All of those above I listed are very good films.

About the 1994 Body Snatchers, though. That’s such a dread-filled, slimy film. It feels like a nightmare that you just cannot wake from. Both Meg Tilly and Gabrielle Anwar are perfect in it. (And the bathtub scene…blech.)

Witch One

Chill Movies

I love Ex Machina but I think The Witch is the best film made in the last 20 years at least.

Just such a goddamn good film that stays true to itself throughout. And everyone gives stellar performances. It is one of the few flawless films that I’ve seen.

Alicia

Chill Movies

Alicia Vikander should have won all the awards for her acting in Ex Machina.

In a roundly outstanding cast, she’s beyond great. She even changes her voice significantly for the part. 1 Compare and contrast her speech and mannerisms in this interview with her film performance.

That’s a terrible, inane interview, even worse than most celebrity interviews (mainly due to Conan’s dumb questions), but she talks a lot at least.

What a great film Ex Machina is, though.

(Incidentally, Alicia pronounces her name correctly here. I hear two phonemes not present in English, though no difficult ones.)

  1. Yes, I realize they do a little digital processing on her voice to make it sound slightly less human, but that’s not what I’m talking about.