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THE LAST POST

This is the last post of Follow The Thread. 

I say that with a mixture of sadness and relief.  Over the course of three years, Elma and I have researched, curated and written 152 posts, covering nearly 900 films, documentaries and TV shows.

We did it because we loved it.  Each week we’d unearth a complex web of threads connecting current titles to the massive online library that we are all blessed to have at our fingertips.  Some of the connections were obvious, some were obscure.  Some resonant, some just fun.  

The process was always delightful.  And, it was a tremendous amount of work.    

But what I’ll especially miss are all the juicy and culty titles we would discover – or, in some cases, re-discover – in the course of our detective work. 

So for this last post, I’ve pulled together a fast, long and extremely biased list of some of discoveries Elma and I have made over the last three years, stretching back to August 2014. 

Thanks for reading.  Arrivaderci!                                                                                                               *Each title is followed by the date of the post*

Afternoon Delight (2013) 5/18/17 Jill Soloway’s 2013 first film.  Kathryn Hahn is a frustrated LA Mom who opens up her home to a homeless young exotic dancer (Juno Temple).    

A Field in England (2013) 4/20/17 Hot UK team Ben Wheatley and wife Amy Jump’s low-budget, anti-romantic account of the 17th Century civil wars, complete with psychedelic mushrooms.

Belle du Jour (1967) 3/23/17 Luis Bunuel’s amoral anti-bourgeois meditation on erotic fulfilment starring 23-year-old Catherine Deneuve.

Welcome to The Rileys (2010) 3/9/17 Kristen Stewart and James Gandolfini in an unexpected fable of a bereaved father.

Orange Sunshine (2016) 1/12/17 Acclaimed doc maker William Kirkley tells the story of Brotherhood of Eternal Love, a mystical/altruistic band of surfer hippies out of Laguna Beach who manufactured and sold 100 million hits of LSD.  

The Jackie Show – Televised Tour of the White House (1962) 12/8/16 80 million people watched as the breathy, beautiful and slightly distant young First Lady showed off her White House restoration on live TV.   

Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench (2009) 12/1/16 Damien Chazelle’s Harvard Thesis film is a jazz musical warm-up for La La Land, scored by his  collaborator Justin Hurwitz. 

Margaret (2007/10) 11/17/16 Kenneth Lonergan’s uneasy maybe-masterpiece starring Anna Paquin (pre-True Blood) as a magnetically unlikeable New York teen trying to work out her place in the universe. 

Crystal Fairy and the Magical Cactus (2013) 11/3/16 Sebastian Silva’s story of a feckless American (Michael Cera) who sets off in search of psychedelic cactus.  He and Chilean friends are joined by spacey, free-spirited Crystal Fairy (Gaby Hoffman).  The trip becomes the trip.   

400 Blows (1959) 10/27/16 Autobiographical childhood film from 27-year-old critic Francois Truffaut that exploded him into the front ranks of the New Wave.  We’d never seen it before! 

Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (2015) 10/6/16 Scary black men with rifles on the steps of the California State House.  The amazing story told definitively in this PBS doc from Stanley Nelson. 

Open Your Eyes (1997) 8/25/16 Alejandro Amenabar’s mindbending Spanish language parable about a young man whose lust captures him in an endless loop of subjective reality was the basis for Vanilla Sky. 

Summer with Monika (1953) 8/11/16 This remarkable early Bergman film about adolescent lovers who escape on a summer idyll has been cited as an influence by both John Waters and Woody Allen.  

A Woman Named Golda (1982) 7/28/16 You wouldn’t know that Ingrid Bergman was dying of cancer when she made this surprising portrait of the grandmotherly and iron-willed Israeli Prime Minister.  Leonard Nimoy plays her husband, Judy Davis is the young Golda.

A Most Wanted Man (2014) 7/7/16 A stark, chilling spy movie from Dutch directory Anton Corbijn, with Seymour Phillip Hoffman starring in his last leading role. 

The Source (1999) 6/30/16 Chuck Workman’s definitive documentary on The Beats.  Focuses on Ginsberg, Kerouac and Burroughs, with Dennis Hopper, Johnny Depp and John Turturro reading their works.

The Blue Room (2014) 6/23/16 A distinctively French and exceptionally erotic thriller from director Mathieu Amalric, based on a novel by Georges Simenon. 

Black Death (2010) 6/16/16 From horror director Chris Smith, “Dark Ages Pulp” — a horror/fable about the evils of religion and belief, with plenty of gore and a liberal dash of the supernatural.  With Sean Bean, aka Edard Stark, and Carice von Houten (GOT’s Melisandre).

I Am Love (2009) 5/5/16 In the third of Tilda Swinton’s ongoing string of collaborations with Italian director Luca Guadigno (Biggest Splash), she plays the Russian-born matriarch of a haute bourgeois Italian family that has fallen on rocky times.

Better Off Ted (2009-2010) 4/7/16 A “brilliant but cancelled” ABC office sitcom that is a more-accurate-than-most mirror of contemporary corporate life.

L’Atalante (1932) 3/10/16 This was the last of seminal French director Jean Viggo’s four films.  He died in his wife’s arms a few days after the film’s disastrous release.  Now it’s beloved, the exceptionally simple story of a girl from a river town who impulsively marries a barge captain.  

Labyrinthe (1986) 1/14/16 15-year-old Jennifer Connelly is a girl on the brink of womanhood whose fantasies come alive.  David Bowie is Jareth, the Ogre King, tempter and torturer in a glam rock wig and notoriously form-fitting tights. Cult fantasy collaboration from George Lucas and Jim (Muppet) Henson.   

99 Homes (2015) 12/11/15 Michael Shannon is a real estate shark who teaches Andrew Garfield how to save his family home – by preying on others.  The start of our obsession with chameleon Shannon. 

The Great Beauty (2013) 12/3/15 Paolo Sorrentino’s Oscar winner about a famous journalist who blithely charms his way through the upper echelons of Roman culture – until, on his 65th birthday, his true love unexpectedly dies. 

What If (2014) 11/25/15 A frustratingly cliched romcom worth seeing for the singularly charming performance by post-Potter Daniel Radcliffe.  Also with Zoe Kazan, Adam Driver and Mackenzie Davis.    

Purple Noon (1960) 11/10/15 René Clément directs Alain Delon in this superior French version of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley.  Recently remastered by Criterion, spoiled only by a wimped-out ending.

Animal Kingdom (2011) 9/24/15 Ben Mendelsohn plays a borerline psychopath in this Down Under reinvigoration of American gangster conventions.  Oscar nom for Jacki Weaver, career rebirth for Mendelsohn. 

Werner Von Braun: Missile to the Moon (2012) 9/3/15 Biography of the charismatic and photogenic ex-Nazi who led Germany’s V2 missile program, was forgiven, and became the face of the American lunar project in the 60’s.

The Maid (2009) 8/27/15 In this Chilean Sundance Grand Jury winner, a family retainer turns the tables when it looks like she’s going to be replaced by a younger woman.  Delicious evil star turn by famous actress Catalina Saavedra.

Mother (2009) 7/23/15 From Korean director Bong Joon-ho (Snowpiercer) – a devoted and deceptively innocuous mother stops at nothing to get her murderous son out of prison.

Freedom on My Mind (1994) 6/25/15 Oscar-nominated doc traces the violent, courageous and ultimately triumphant struggle for voter rights in 60’s Mississippi.  

Infinitely Polar Bear (2015) 6/18/15 Mark Ruffalo is in top form as a crazy but caring dad in this honest and winning first film by veteran producer Maya Forbes.

Dogtooth (2009) 6/11/15 A typically idiosyncratic festival favorite from Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster).  A father protects his teenage children from the world by confining them to the family estate. 

Control (2007) 6/4/15 This atypically moody rock n roll biopic about Ian Curtis, lead singer for Joy Division paints him as a doomed poet.  Impeccable performances by Sam Riley and Samantha Morton as his wife.  Black and white, directed by Joy Division photographer Anton Corbijn.   

Maggie (2015) 5/7/15 Arnold Schwarzenegger gives an surprisingly excellent, dialed-back performance as a father whose daughter is infected with a zombie virus and faces unbearable.  Post-apocalyptic, but not an action film.  

The Internet’s Own Boy: The Life of Aaron Schwartz (2014) 4/9/15 Digital-focused doc maker Brian Knappenberger hones on in programming prodigy Schwartz, who was instrumental in developing RSS, Creative Commons and Reddit, but was hounded to death after he successfully defeated the corporation-backed Stop Online Piracy Act.

Hustle & Flow (2004) 3/18/15 This Sundance breakout stars Terrence Howard and Taraji P. Henson as a pimp and his girlfriend trying to rap their way out of the ghetto, showing a lot of chemistry and foreshadowing Empire.

Claudine (1974) 2/19/15 In the heyday of Blaxploitation, Diahann Carroll got an Oscar nomination for this story of a single welfare mother who falls in love with a garbage man, played by James Earl Jones.  Music by Curtis Mayfield.

The Music of Chance (1993) 2/5/15 James Spader donned a black wig and moustache to play a hustling gambler.  But it’s not what you think.  The director is Peter Haas who went on to do Angels and Insects.  Mandy Patinkin, Charles Durning, Joel Grey. 

The Babadook (2014) 1/22/15 Mind-twisting Freudian study cloaked in a meticulously crafted horror film about a widowed mother and her troubled/troublesome 7-year-old, from first-time Aussie director Jennifer Kent.

Red Riding (2009) 1/15/15 A pre-breakout Andrew Garfield is outstanding in this unique UK TV project based on David Pearce’s serial killer novels.  Three novels, three films, three great directors, three years, three different looks (16mm; 35mm; digital) – all pulled together by screenwriter Tony Grisoni.  

Headhunters (1991) 11/20/14 From director Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game) highest grossing Norwegian film ever.  A short and pathologically ambitious headhunter moonlights as an art thief to support his trophy wife.  Things go wrong.

Following (1998) 11/6/14 Great time to revisit Christopher Nolan’s first film.  A black and white low-budget creeper that interweaves three stories from three different time frames. 

Brothers of the Head (2006) 10/8/14 Remarkably authentic and intentionally unfunny mockumentary by the makers of LOST IN LA MANCHA follows a pair of conjoined twins who become punk rockers in 1970’s England.  

Ace in the Hole (1951) 9/25/14 Neglected and prescient film from Billy Wilder.  Kirk Douglas plays a corrupt, disgraced reporter who seizes an opportunity to go big when a smalltown man is trapped in a cave.  First time Wilder was writer, producer and director.

Stuck on You (2003) 9/18/14 Farrelly brothers cast Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear as conjoined twins who go to Hollywood.  Loaded with cameos – Cher, Nicholson, Leno, Streep.

The Devil’s Backbone (2001) 9/4/14 Early Guillermo de Toro evolving his signature mix of tenderness and phantasm.  Gothic horror set in an orphanage during the Spanish Civil War.    

Dark City (1998) 8/21/14 A man struggles with memories of his past, including a wife he cannot remember. Brilliant gothic labyrinth from Alex Proyas (The Crow; I, Robot).

THE LAST POST was originally published on FollowTheThread

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ROUGHING IT

With camping season in full swing, we decided to highlight a breed of films that are best avoided if you are heading into the wild.

We’re talking about movies that take place on back roads, deep in the woods and in far-flung, sparsely populated locales—the kind of places where opportunities for outdoor activities abound.  

But these are movies… Any protagonist who ventures into an unspoiled location is guaranteed to encounter something a lot more troublesome than pesky mosquitoes and spotty cellphone service.  

Happy Camping!!

Ian and Samantha head to a national park, hoping the bush will give them space for some quiet time together. They arrive at an isolated campsite to find an SUV and a tent – no sign of the occupants.

As night falls and the campers fail to return, Ian and Sam grow increasingly uneasy. The discovery of a distressed child wandering in the woods unleashes a terrifying chain of events that test the young couple to breaking point.

  THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999)

Yes, technically it’s a horror film, but any urbanite camper who ventures out into the woods is going to hear strange noises late at night – and think of this film.

This film combined Hi8 video with B&W 16mm film. The premise is 3 students go into the Maryland woods at night and are never seen again. All that remains is the “found footage” documenting their adventures leading up to their final minutes.

          INTO THE WILD (2007)

Based on the true story of Christopher McCandless, a young man who abandoned a traditional post-graduate life and attempted to live independently in the wilds of Alaska. What happened to him on the way transformed this young wanderer into an enduring symbol for anyone who has dreamed chucking it all and returning to nature.

In the end, he tested himself by heading alone into the wilds of the great North, where everything he had seen and learned and felt came to a head in ways he never could have expected.

It’s a sobering reminder to be prepared and humble before venturing into the wilderness; but many campers will also relate to McCandless’ sense of adventure and abandon.

  DELIVERANCE (1972)

Adapted from poet James Dickey’s popular novel, John Boorman’s 1972 movie recounts the grueling psychological and physical journey taken by four city slickers down a river in the backwoods of Georgia. At the request of Iron John-esque Lewis (Burt Reynolds), Ed (Jon Voight), Bobby (Ned Beatty) and Drew (Ronny Cox) agree to canoe down wild, uncharted section of the river before a dam project ruins the region.

After warnings from the locals, and Drew’s ominous “Dueling Banjos” encounter with a mute inbred boy, the four men embark on their trip. On day 2, things take a turn for the worse when Bobby and Ed decide to rest on shore after becoming separated from Lewis and Drew. Two rifle-wielding mountain men (Bill McKinney and Herbert “Cowboy” Coward) emerge from the woods and capture the men. I won’t go into details on what happens next but if you haven’t seen the film — be warned.

Lewis and Drew rescue them, but the attack changes the nature of the journey. As the river gets rougher and rougher, the men come to nightmarish grips with what it means to survive outside the safety net of “civilization.”

         WOLF CREEK (2005)

A dream vacation turns into a nightmare in this taut thriller from Australia. Ben (Nathan Phillips), Lizzie (Cassandra Magrath), and Kristy (Kestie Morassi) are three friends who, after a night of celebratory drinking, hit the road for a trip to Wolf Creek National Park, where they plan to spend a week hiking and surfing. The three friends are happy to be spending time together, especially after Ben makes the happy discovery that Lizzie is as infatuated with him as he is with her.

After a long day hiking, Ben, Lizzie, and Kristy make the unpleasant discovery that their car’s battery is dead, leaving them stuck in the middle of nowhere. Help arrives in the form of Mick (John Jarratt), a burly but good-natured outdoorsman who happens upon them; Mick tells them that he can fix their car, and offers to give them a ride to his place down the road.

Grateful but a bit nervous around the gregarious stranger, Ben, Lizzie, and Kristy offer Mick a wealth of thanks for his help, and give him some money for his troubles before they fall asleep around the campfire. The next morning, the travelers find themselves bound, gagged, drugged, and separated from one another, and they realize Mick is not the good Samaritan they imagined.

      RACE WITH THE DEVIL (1975)

Peter Fonda, Warren Oats, Lara Parker and Loretta Swit star as two couples who go on vacation together and drive their R.V. deep into the Texas hinterlands where they camp out, drink beer and tear up the backroads on their dirt bikes.

Their holiday turns deadly when they accidentally witness a secret ceremony of devil worshippers and a human sacrifice. Their presence is discovered and they barely elude the pursuing coven members.

When they report the incident to the local police, the investigation leads nowhere and the two couples are strongly urged to leave the area. Back on the road again, the vacationers soon realize they are not safe and are being stalked at every stop along their way.

      ROUGHING IT was originally published on FollowTheThread

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DEFINITELY NOT DOWNTON ABBEY

For years now we’ve been suckers for costume drama (cue 1729 trumpet “Fanfare-Rondeau” by Moret –the Masterpiece Classic theme).  P&P, Sense & Sensibility, and yes, the endlessly foamy Downton.

But when somebody comes along with a wicked new twist on period drama, we love it even more.

  LADY MACBETH (2016)

Not Shakespeare – this is based on “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk” a novella by Dostoevsky contemporary Andrei Leskov.

Boris, a nasty but rich old man, buys young Katherine as a wife for his equally nasty son, Alexander, who lives at home.  On their wedding night Alexander reveals that he is both kinky and impotent.  Plus, they won’t let her leave the house.

But when father and son both leave town on business (bad idea) Katherine gets out and falls into passion with a stable hand named Sebastian.  The affair opens up depths of  passion and dark resolve in the heretofore meek Katherine; before long she has disposed of both the father and the son.    The film is reportedly a breakout for Florence Pugh (Catherine).  It’s also notable for breaking with costume drama conventions and casting of black actors in both the roles of Sebastian and Katherine’s maid.

    WUTHERING HEIGHTS (2011)

Casting an unknown black actor in the “Caribbean” role once occupied by Laurence Olivier and Ralph Fiennes is only one of the breaks with convention that make Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights worth watching.  There are also the Heath, which is both less inviting and more

Arnold has won the Cannes Jury Award three times for pointedly contemporary stories.  Here she worked to strip away the buffer of literary awe and invent a sort of proto-Wuthering Heights.  Her Heath is a brutal place, but teeming with life – we see a microscopic child’s eye view of the bugs and undergrowth.  The connection between the young Cathy and Heathcliffe is primal and childlike too — it knows no other way and no other world.

Very exciting and freshening.  Maybe the movie begins to take its mission to re-invent too seriously, throwing in a few too many “fucks”, “cunts” and off-kilter angles.  You still come away with the feeling that you’ve seen a vision of the book that makes you want to read it again.

If you loved the 1939 classic, you may hate this.  But we do and didn’t.

        THE DRAUGHTSMAN’S CONTRACT (1991)

 In many ways the opposite of Arnold’s film, Greenaway’s first feature imposes a surreal formalism and arch eroticism on a period that happens to be ideally suited to such an approach.

Set in 1694, the contract of the title is a commission from a rich wife to draw her absent husband’s country estate in meticulous detail – the specialty of the handsome and cocky draughtsman.

But there’s a rider to the contract.  In addition to room, board, and a small payment, the draughtsman gets to enjoy the lady’s favors whenever he desires.  After a token protestation the lady says yes.

The film is as methodical and meticulous as the draughtsman – but peppered with tiny anachronisms and incongruities.   After a while the stilted dialogue and measured pace begin to wear you down.

But then the (also married) daughter points out that tiny clues are creeping into the rigidly composed scene, and suggests that the draughtsman may be being set up as a patsy for the absent father’s murder.  She blackmails the draughtsman – by demanding the same intimate favors that he requires from her mother.

     ANGELS AND INSECTS (1991)

This baroque delight was directed by sculptor Philip Haas and based on an A.S. Byatt novel. It seemed wonderfully perverse when it came out, but we just watched the trailer again and it comes off as so comically overwrought that now we need to revisit the film itself.

Roger Ebert (who liked it a lot) said it was the “dark underbelly of a Merchant-Ivory film”.

Yes, but — in an odd way, not really that dark.  What’s delightful about the film is that it takes the insect behaviors that entomologist William (Mark Rylance) has spent years studying in the Amazon, and overlays them on the hothouse manners of the aristocratic Victorian family of his patron.  Everything is brilliantly colored yet emotionally detached – until it’s punctuated by frenzied passion.

Which is exactly how blindingly blonde Eugenia Alabaster (Patsy Kensit) behaves toward William after she has astonished him by accepting his proposal.

But like Wuthering Heights it’s the brother you have to watch out for.  Douglas Henshall is Edgar Alabaster, as blond as his sister and enraged that a brunette Scotsman – penniless to boot – should lay fingers on her.  Kristen Scott Thomas is wonderful as the mousy maid whose drawings of ants eventually catch William’s eye.

  A YOUNG DOCTOR’S NOTEBOOK (2012-13)

We’re still waiting for an English-language version of Mikhail Bulgakov’s posthumous delight Master and Margarita (it’s been optioned!) but in the meantime there’s this semi-autobiographical series based on the author’s short stories.

It’s a dark, dark comedy, with Daniel Radcliffe playing a young doctor graduates from med school in 1917.  It’s the middle of the Russian Revolution and he lands in one of the most backward parts of Siberia, where superstition is more credible than science and practice of the medical arts require a strong arm and an even stronger stomach.

John Hamm plays the older, wiser doctor who is not just looking back on his youth, but actually interacting with his younger self – even as he’s desperately clinging to his profession despite a rampaging addiction to  morphine.

It’s a short series, two seasons of 4 episodes each, shot on a shoestring by UK’s Sky Arts.  It’s uneven, but the draw here is the stars, especially Hamm, and a chance to get another glimpse inside Bulgakov’s mind.

  CRIMSON PEAK (2015) 

As you would expect from Guillermo del Torro, this spooky romance out-gothics the gothics.

The movie starts in Buffalo, New York with Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowski) receiving a visit from her dead mother, with a warning “Beware Crimson Peak”.

Fourteen years later, Edith falls for British baronet Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) and despite warnings from her father goes to England to live with him and his sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain) in the family home, which is perched above a red clay mine.

When Edith’s father and childhood friend Alan (Charlie Hunnam) discover that Sharpe has been married and widowed three times before, Alan travels to England to save her.  By this time, Edith is seeing red ghosts and coughing up blood.  It’s then that Sharpe tells her the mansion is sometimes called Crimson Peak.

The movie is good, dark fun, brimming with dark symbolism, horror movie tropes, doomed romance, and allusions to previous gothic novelists and filmmakers.

                              DEFINITELY NOT DOWNTON ABBEY was originally published on FollowTheThread

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GHOSTLY

If there’s no such thing as ghosts, how come humans have been talking about them since the dawn of recorded history?  

When we were teens in Ireland, we used to hang out at a neighbor’s abandoned house – the brother and sister who lived there had passed away. One evening our candles extinguished en masse and the air went cold. After that, we stopped hanging out there….

But even if there were no such thing, it seems that authors and filmmakers would have had to invent them as a way for us to deal with mortality.

  A GHOST STORY (2017) 

With his latest film, director David Lowery (Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, Pete’s Dragon) returns with an exploration of legacy, loss, and the human longing for meaning and connection.

Recently deceased, a white-sheeted ghost (Casey Affleck) returns to his suburban home to console his grieving wife (Rooney Mara), only to find that in his ghostly state he has become unstuck in time, forced to watch passively as the life he knew and the woman he loves slowly slip away.

Increasingly unmoored, the ghost embarks on a cosmic journey through memory and history, confronting life’s deep questions and the enormity of existence. A haunting meditation on love and grief, the film itself is a haunting experience that lingers long after the credits roll.

The ever inventive A24 Films have opened A Ghost Story in NYC’s Chinatown—you can get your own customized Ghost Sheet—here is the link: https://aghost.store/shop/welcome

GHOST (1990)

The late, iconic Patrick Swayze returns as a ghost in an attempt to protect Demi Moore, his wife, from impending danger with the help of a reluctant psychic, played by Whoopi Goldberg.

This tearjerker is a staple for many women; but the compelling depiction of the afterlife (screenwriter Bruce Jay Rubin based it on theon the Tibetan Book of the Dead) and the comic relief of Goldberg’s Oscar-winning performance combined to make it the highest-grossing film of 1990.

The track “Unchained Melody,” originated as the theme to an obscure 1955 prison film. Multiple versions charted in the US and UK before the 1965 Righteous Brothers cover became a jukebox staple. But after Demi and Patrick’s romantic/erotic potting wheel scene, in the summer of 1990 it was suddenly everywhere again. 

          BEETLEJUICE (1988) 

Tim Burton’s dark comedy is about a married couple who die thanks to the carelessness of a cute dog in a freak auto accident. At the gates to heaven they discover they are on a long celestial waiting list and must return to their old home as ghosts for the next 50 years.

Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis are horrified to see their home is now occupied by a rich, dysfunctional family who move in and begin to change everything. In an attempt to scare the new family from the house they engage the services of a veteran yellow haired and profane ghost, Michael Keaton, aka Beetlejuice.

               THE SIXTH SENSE (1999)

The indelible line “I see dead people” combined with the big reveal of M. Night Shyamalan’s film—that Bruce Willis’ Dr. Malcolm Crowe is in fact one of the ghosts that little Haley Joel Osment sees –to nail the film’s rank as one of the best modern ghost stories.

Amazingly Shyamalan’s first two features were an ethnic drama and a family comedy. Sixth Sense was a career-maker for him, so much so that he’s always struggle to top it.

The role of the sensitive therapist was a huge change-up for macho action star Willis — one of the best and most emotionally resonant of his career. While the ending is memorable, the chemistry between the film’s haunted boy and ghostly leading man is what makes the picture enduring, even after you’re in on the surprise twist.

                  TRULY, MADLY, DEEPLY (1991)

Anthony Minghella’s (The English Patient, The Reader) directorial debut is universally loved by the critics and was referred to as the British version of Ghost.

The charming love story of a woman, Nina, (Juliet Stephenson) who’s inconsolable with grief over the death of her partner and celloist, Jamie (Alan Rickman). Just when Nina thinks she’ll never recover from her loss, Jamie’s ghost returns and, much to her dismay, begins to muck about in her daily life, which includes bringing other ghosts along to watch, of all things, videos to pass the time.

       THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR (1947) 

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir is the improbable love story between a widow, Mrs. Lucy Muir (Gene Tierney) and the deceased Sea Captain Daniel Gregg (Rex Harrison). Being a penniless widow, Mrs. Muir, along with her young daughter Anna (Natalie Wood), move into Gull Cottage on the English coast only to discover that it’s haunted by the previous owner, a loud-mouthed ghost.

Reluctantly, the two form a friendship (Lucy is the only one who can see the Captain) and when seeing that she’s in need of money, the captain persuades her to be the ghostwriter for his memoirs—they end up falling in love.

Joseph L. Mankiewicz had already had an incredible career, but this is one of his earliest films as director. He’d go on to direct All About Eve, Guys and Dolls, Suddenly Last Summer, and Cleopatra.

With a great, moody score from Bernard Hermann and the Oscar- nominated cinematography from Charles Lang, The Ghost and Mrs Muir is one of those incredibly entrancing ghost stories and a fan favorite – it gets one of the highest ratings we’ve ever seen on Amazon.

                 GHOSTLY was originally published on FollowTheThread

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HOORAY FOR THE RED, WHITE AND BRITISH

The most typically American movie opening this Fourth of July weekend is Baby Driver, made by a quintessentially British auteur — Edgar Wright, of Shaun of the Dead fame. 

It’s no secret that we’re anglophiles here at The Thread (even though one of us was born in Ireland). And when we see American culture reflected back in a British mirror – well, sometimes it seems like those English directors love America better than we love ourselves. 

This week — definitive American movies that were made by UK directors. 

  BABY DRIVER (2017)

Edgar Wright had barely finished his genre-steeped, culty, and ultra-British zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead (2004) when Universal offered him a big-budget job directing comic book adaptation Scott Pilgrim vs The World(2009).

Wright enhanced his homeland cred by going back repeatedly to finish his UK-set “Three Flavors Cornetto Trilogy” (Shaun, Hot Fuzz (2007), The World’s End(2013).   But he was also dating Anna Kendrick and co-writing The Adventures of Tin-Tin and Ant-Man, anchoring him firmly in LA

Baby Driver is a hybrid heist movie/romance, softer-edged than Tarantino but equally soundtrack-driven and film-buff referential.

Baby-faced Ansel Elgort (The Fault In Our Stars) plays a moody savant getaway driver whose tortured genius is fueled by an iPod for each mood and occasion.  He owes his soul (for at least one last job) to boss Kevin Spacey.  But things are complicated by a whack-job thug (Jamie Foxx) and a waitress named Debra (Lily James) who reminds him of his mom.

P.S. – if you happen to be in NYC this week, Edgar Wright has curated a series of Heist Films at BAMcinématek

    NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959)

By the time he made North By Northwest, Alfred Hitchcock was an American citizen, a huge TV celebrity, and had been making movies longer in Hollywood than in England.

Hitchcock loved iconic settings; Cary Grant’s smug but charming ad man Roger O. Thornhill flees from The Plaza to the UN to Mount Rushmore – stopping along the way at a deserted, treeless Midwestern landscape.

Thornhill is being hunted by foreign agents who mistake him for a spy – who in the end doesn’t even exist.  The cool Hitchcockian blonde is Eva Marie Saint, who despite working for the enemy ends up in Thornhill’s arms.

This just may be our favorite Hitchcock film, but we’re hard pressed to say why.  Maybe the Americana, maybe the simplicity.  Maybe it’s just that in his mid-50s he was at the height of his craftsmanship.

And on a run…the film before this was Vertigo (1958), and the next would be Psycho (1960), which Hitchcock made on a TV budget and went on to be a global blockbuster, making him extremely wealthy and allowing him to eventually own a third of MCA Universal, the studio he worked for.

    THELMA AND LOUISE (1991)

 Even after he had become passionately attached to Callie Khouri’s script, Ridley Scott was not his own first choice to direct Thelma and Louise.  Scott had years of highest-end commercials under his belt, and was famous for his darkly stylish sci-fi flicks –blockbuster creature shock-fest Alien (shot in London), and the considerably less-successful Blade Runner (L.A.).  He was also seen as pretty macho — for a Brit anyway.

Eventually he realized that he was so invested in the project that he had to direct it himself.   And when he did, the result was yet another  cinematic landmark.  But rather than being set in a shadowy future, it was set the sun-drenched cutting edge of the present.  The result was a feminist road moviestatement that redefined a classic American genre, redefined the kind of characters that women could play, and took Scott’s career new heights.

    AMERICAN BEAUTY (1999)

 Sam Mendes is really a theater director.  But a theater director who won an Oscar for his first film (American Beauty) and is one of two directors ever to have done two James Bond films.  Go figure.

Alan Ball wrote American Beauty as a spec script to get himself out of the sitcom business.  He never thought it would get made, but it did, and empowered him to become the moving force behind HBO series like Six Feet Under and True Blood.

At a young age Mendes was a founder of London’s Donmar Warehouse theater; after his Broadway success with Cabaret (Alan Cumming version) he took a trip to Hollywood, was offered the chance to direct, and pulled American Beauty out of a pile on an agent’s desk.

Even though it’s not a pure genre piece, American Beauty taps a well-mined vein in American film: the struggle to find yourself when you’re lost in the existential desert of the suburban American Dream.

  FEAR AND LOATHING IN LOS VEGAS (1998)

 Both Scorsese and Oliver Stone tried and failed, but Terry Gilliam was born to make this movie.  And, like the two leads — Johnny Depp and Benecio del Toro — you can’t imagine anyone else pulling off Hunter Thompson’s this drug-fueled, gonzo tour de frenzy.

For us, this movie captures the Vegas zeitgeist in a way that no other film has: utter chaotic decadence.  Even though it relates more closely to real life than any of Gilliam’s other movies, the result is less structured and tenuously tethered to reality.

Fear and Loathing was widely panned upon release, but with every year that goes by it becomes more beloved.  Beloved may be a weird word to use about a movie this debauched; but it’s clear from fan reviews that for those who have been there – in body or in spirit — it’s an irreplaceable document of a certain state of mind.  The film’s even gotten a Criterion Collection release, which is akin to being accepted into the Library of Congress – but more exclusive.

    THE GRIFTERS (1990)

Like songs, some movies mark a very particular moment in time.  My Beautiful Laundrette is one of those movies.  For us it marked the first moment when a broader definition of racial and sexual identity became an ordinary part of cultural discourse — for the first time not as some special case, but just as everyday facts of life, like hair color or eye color.

So for some strange reason we’ve always been happy that Stephen Frears found Hollywood a nice place to visit but never really came to live there.

The word “grifter” is a mashup of “grafter” and “drifter”, American circus slang for the smalltime con artists who followed circuses in the early 20th century.  It’s a person who lives by being smarter and more charming than their marks – and yet is temperamentally unable to think any bigger than one move ahead.

It’s an amazing, bright, bleak movie, our most favorite of many favorite Anjelica Huston performances, and with John Cusack (they do look alike, don’t they?) and Annette Bening, a near perfect three-hander.

  HOORAY FOR THE RED, WHITE AND BRITISH was originally published on FollowTheThread

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DYSTOPIA NOW

In this politically inflamed, socially mediated era, large groups of people feel abandoned by society and their government. Alongside such alienation has come a spike in hate crimes triggered by the “fear” of people with different religious, ethnic and economic backgrounds. 

More a cry of rage than a real solution, the border wall between the US and Mexico has turned into an ideological litmus test. Ironically, the fact that the wall is actually out for bids seems to have only increased the anger and violence.

This week’s film, The Bad Batch, tracks people in a very near future who are cast out of American society and banished to a desert wasteland.

As they enter the wasteland a sign reads:

“Beyond this fence is no longer the territory of Texas. Hereafter no person within the territory beyond this fence is a resident of the United States of America or shall be acknowledged, recognized or governed by the laws and governing bodies therein. Good luck.”

 THE BAD BATCH (2017) 

Ana Lily Amirpour (A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night) directs The Bad Batch, a multi-genre mashup of slasher-meets-horror-meets-dystopia- meets-love story.

Leading the way is Arlen (Suki Waterhouse), an apparently wholesome individual who is tossed into the Mexican desert in the film’s opening scene: she is part of the “bad batch”, inferior citizenry who are no longer wanted in the U.S. After briefly wandering the arid flats, she is kidnapped and taken to an encampment called The Bridge, filled with bulked-up steroid abusers; in short order she is chained up and two of her limbs severed for food like other “bad batchers” who have shared the same fate.

Arlen escapes thanks to a Fisher King-style hobo wandering the wilderness (Jim Carrey), and ends up in a second camp, called Comfort– a place of equally metaphoric implications. Comfort houses the real outcasts – immigrants, the mentally ill, the disabled – but on first inspection at least, appears to have rough charm and some form of rubbing-along livability.

Comfort, however, is controlled by a comically sinister cult leader (Keanu Reeves), who urges the inhabitants to “follow the dream” in an excellent deadpan.

BOMBAY BEACH (2011)

“The harder you work, the richer you’ll die.” Maybe this single line justifies the price of admission to Bombay Beach, an eerily compelling documentary about lost souls in a lost place, made by the former music-video director Alma Har’el.

Bombay Beach is the name of a ruined town on the Salton Sea, a saline lake in the middle of Southern California’s Colorado Desert. It was a smart vacation resort in the 1950s and 1960s, but abandoned when the water level rose. Now its seedy chalets and trailers are homes for America’s most needy, like a refugee holding camp for the poor, surreally living in the fragments of a forgotten dream of leisure and prosperity.

Har’el tells the story of three of these marginal souls, and does so with compassion and insight. One man had been arrested just after 9/11 on charges of maintaining what appeared to be a huge weapons and ammo dump in this wilderness. He says he’s no militia extremist, just a regular guy with an American affection for guns. Now he’s out of prison, and his son is addicted to Ritalin and other prescription medication.

An elegant oldster, like a character from a David Lynch movie, makes a living buying discount cigarettes from Native American reservations and selling them at a profit to his neighbors.

A young African-American boy has a future ahead of him with a possible football scholarship to college.

All these lives are recounted with flair and an eye for an exotic tale. It’s a rich slice of Americana, and there’s a great soundtrack from musicians including Bob Dylan.

          MAD MAX: THE ROAD WARRIOR (1981) 

Director George Miller’s follow-up to his own 1979 hit Mad Max is proof that not all sequels are inferior. If anything, this brutal sci-fi action film is even more intense and exciting than its predecessor, although the state of its post-apocalyptic world has only become worse.

Several years after the deaths of his wife and child, Max (Mel Gibson) has become an alienated nomad, wandering an Australian outback that has fallen into tribal warfare conducted from scattered armed camps.

After a road battle with psychotic villain Wez (Vernon Wells), Max meets up with the odd Gyro Captain (Bruce Spence), who takes him to the camp of a sympathetic group led by Pappagallo (Mike Preston). Since Pappagallo’s people are camped at a refinery, Max plans to take their oil — more precious than gold in this world — but eventually joins them to fight a band of marauders led by the evil Humungus (Kjell Nilsson).

The striking climax features a heart-pounding chase scene involving an oil tanker-truck and a frenzied rush for the coast, with Humungus and his forces in hot pursuit. Nilsson makes a scary villain, with huge muscles and a sinister pre-Jason hockey mask, edited at breakneck pace and staged with manic fury by Miller and stunt coordinator Max Aspin.

            TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974) 

Tobe Hooper’s film, made over 40 years ago, shocked the nation and gave birth to a new form of horror. The film’s release was troubled and there was increasing pressure to censor or ban the film but it has stood the test of time to become an iconic landmark.

When Sally (Marilyn Burns) hears that her grandfather’s grave may have been vandalized, she and her paraplegic brother, Franklin (Paul A. Partain), set out with their friends to investigate.

After a detour to their family’s old farmhouse, they discover a group of crazed, murderous outcasts living next door who also like to dabble in cannibalism. When the group is attacked one by one by the chainsaw-wielding Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen), who wears a mask of human skin, the survivors must do everything they can to escape.

This film never fails to terrify.

             CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (1985)

Ruggero Deodato’s film was banned and heavily censored across the world; the film’s director was even arrested on its release and the print was seized.

Deodato’s pseudo-documentary follows the plight of four arrogant filmmakers who fly out to the Amazon, in order to film their documentary The Green Inferno, believing that the scenes they capture will buy them inevitable success.  They are never seen again.

The footage is recovered by Professor Harold Moore (Francesca Ciardi) who travels to the Amazon and finds the remains of the film crew along with their unseen footage.

The footage reveals their vile treatment of the South American tribe of cannibals who ultimately turned on them. Their brutal deaths at the hands of the tribe becomes the subject of their documentary.

                 SUSPIRIA (1977) 

Dario Argento’s 1977 slasher is arguably the artistic apex of the giallo movement, a horror genre he pioneered along with fellow Italians Mario Bava and Lucio Fulci. This film has become the entry-level key to unlocking the whole genre, featuring its trademark lush, hyperstylized, color-saturated visuals, lashings of gore, its undercurrent of lurid female eroticism and its magnificent score —in this case provided by rockers Goblin and Argento’s “Tenebre.”

The film follows an American ballerina (Jessica Harper) who transfers to a sinister German dance academy covertly run by a satanic coven of witches, including Dark Shadows star Joan Bennett. The mish-mash of languages and accents from the multi-national cast doesn’t matter much since the whole thing was post-dubbed anyway. But once you become attuned to the garishness of Argento’s work, Suspiria is undeniably creepy and haunting, tuning in to burgeoning female sexuailty as a metaphor for a transformation process that is unknowable.

A remake directed by Luca Guadagnino starring Chloe Moritz and Tilda Swinton is being released later this year.

      DYSTOPIA NOW was originally published on FollowTheThread

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KEEPING IT SIMPLE

  Over the weekend we took a road trip and on the way back listened to an old favorite by Blue October: “Jump Rope”. 

The chorus goes: “Up. Down. Up. Down. / Life’s like a Jump Rope…”  

Feeling that way these days – two weeks ago, we swore off online news and decided to spend the summer reading nothing but (printed) books.  And then last week, the Comey Circus comes to town and we’re glued to the newsfeeds, all atwitter with hope and schadenfreude.   

 So this week we’re taking another swing at simplicity, starting with the new indie release, Maudie.   

    MAUDIE (2017) 

Maudie is a biographical film about Maude Lewis, a woman living in a  little Nova Scotia town in Nova Scotia who becomes famous as a folk artist.

Maud Dowly is a small woman with a playful temperament who has been afflicted with rheumatoid arthritis since her teens.  In her 30’s she finds herself in need of money and answers a notice placed the local grocery shop by a gruff fish-seller named Everett Lewis.  Lewis is looking for a housekeeper, but they end up marrying and living together in his tiny house – giving the locals and Maud’s family plenty to talk about.

Maud starts painting simple, cheerful subjects and gradually becomes famous, first locally and eventually across North America – Richard Nixon buys a painting for the white house.

Everett is played by Ethan Hawke, who has become so entertaining and peripatetic that we keep our eyes peeled for anything he takes on.  This is a fun change-up for him.  Maud is played by Sally Hawkins, one of those incredibly versatile British actresses who has appeared in everything from Shakespeare to Godzilla.  She started out as a Mike Leigh regular, and garnered some buzz as a vaguely similar character in Leigh’s Happy Go Lucky.

The director here is Irishwoman Aisling Walsh, who has been directing prestigious UK TV series for years (Trial and Retribution, Fingersmith, A Poet In New York), but didn’t break out in the feature realm until the 2003 award-winning Song for a Raggy Boy.

  HAPPY-GO-LUCKY (2008)

For us, Mike Leigh always conjures kitchen sink realism — Secrets and Lies, Vera Drake.   But even Naked is technically a black, black comedy – and then there’s Topsy Turvy, Abigail’s Party, and this one: Happy-Go-Lucky.

Sally Hawkins plays Pauline “Poppy” Cross, a grade school teacher who’s almost pathologically optimistic — Kimmy Schmidt’s even more upbeat British cousin.

When Poppy’s bicycle is stolen, it means it’s time to learn to drive.  The driving teacher (Steven Marsan) is her (bi)polar opposite – brimming over with prejudice, bile, and conspiracy theories.  Naturally, he falls in love with her.  But Leigh’s point isn’t that she’s a fool.  Poppy makes it clear that this is not a romance that is meant to be.

The movie leaves you wondering – is it all about serotonin?  Or is being ‘realistic’ – as Poppy’s sister urges her to become – a choice?  And maybe not such a good one.

    This Gerard Depardieu starrer turns the existential question into a critical one.  Many writers thought it was contrived and sentimental.  But we always check out Amazon reviews too, and “real people” there  give it raves and 4.6 stars.  Free, incidentally, on Amazon Prime.

The French title is La Tête en Fiche – an expression that means something like “an uncultivated mind”.  Depardieu plays a marginally literate handyman with a heart of gold who meets a highly cultured 95-year-old scientist on a park bench.

She is reading Camus’ The Plague, piques his interest, and starts reading it to him. The language and the ideas in the book fire his imagination, and the two start meeting regularly.   When her eyesight fails he struggles, with increasing success, to read to her.  And when she is sent off to a cheaper retirement home, he tracks her down and brings her to live in his house.

Here at The Thread we tend to fixate on actors, and will watch (almost) anything with Depardieu in it.  Marguerite is played by French national treasure Gisèle Casadesus.  Casadesus is still alive, now 103.  She started acting when she joined the Comédie-Française in 1939 at age 20, and has been at it ever since.

Is the film sentimental?  Inevitably.  Will you really care?  Probably not.

      FORREST GUMP (1994)

Since we moved back to the East Coast, Friday nights have become family movie nights, complete with takeout pizza.  The challenge is finding titles that everybody will enjoy, from ages 10 to 13 to too-old-to-tell.

As it turns out, John Hughes and Tom Hanks are consistent winners.  So a month or so ago we rewatched Forrest Gump.

Home run – and as it turns out, for all concerned.  A revelation for the kids and a returning pleasure for us parents.

Like it’s star, the movie accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do.  Plus, we realized that we kind of buy the moral of the story: if you just remember that “stupid is as stupid does”, history will take care of itself.  Now, if we could just successfully internalize that message…

    OF MICE AND MEN (1992)

There are two eminent versions of this Steinbeck classic.  One of the things we’ve learned from our Friday night movies is that any film pre-1970 is a gamble and pre-1960 is an extremely specialized taste.  If you share that taste, you might want to revisit the 1939 Oscar winner, starring Burgess Meredith and Lon Chaney, Jr.

But for this week’s list, we chose the Gary Sinese’s version.  There’s the Sinese/Gump connection; and we  like the fact that John Malkovich, who specializes in egghead villains, here plays the simple man-child, Lenny.

Steinbeck’s fable feels inevitably retro – and here we like that tension between the simpler-time, simpler-place and the contemporary actors.  And that even with the whiff of anachronism, the story remains inherently heart-wrenching, Steinbeck’s patented tragic disconnect between the moral simplicity we long for and the complexity of the real world.

This was Sinese’s second feature as director and he hasn’t directed anything since.  He had loved the novel since boyhood.  A few years earlier he played Tom Joad in the 1988 Steppenwolf Theater production (staged by the brilliant Frank Galati, one of our mentors at Northwestern).  The screenplay  by Horton Foote hews closely to the book.  And the acting is appropriately pared down from the sometimes hammy 1939 version.

We didn’t know it until we started researching today, but Sinese is a staunch Republican.  He supported both McCain and Romney – but has disavowed Trump.

  SLINGBLADE (1996) 

As you may have noticed, our subtext has veered from happiness to morality – simplicity as the moral compass in a world of spin.

We keep thinking of couple lines from our favorite Yeats poem: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity.” Which seems to be one of the few sentiments the two ends of the political spectrum share.

Billy Bob Thornton wrote, directed, and starred in Slingblade, another moral fable; and it became his breakthrough achievement.  Karl is a simple character whose simplicity is transformed into a superpower: an unerring ability to serve his vision of good with an intensity denied to anyone with a more complex view of the world.

When Karl summarily executes Dwight Yoakam’s abusive redneck boyfriend, he acts with a redemptive purity that these days seems beyond the reach of even superheroes.  You have to turn to  Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino for another character who’s so sure of what’s right and so willing to sacrifice his life for it.

KEEPING IT SIMPLE was originally published on FollowTheThread

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DINNER REVELATIONS

The dinner party is something we all experience, either casually or formally, with friends and family. It may aim to celebrate an occasion or be a downright awkward experience that could not be avoided ala Beatriz at Dinner.

The common denominator in our filmic examples this week is that the directors take this mundane premise and twist it into something entirely strange, be that shocking, witty, scary or explosive. The director can make a point and show rather than tell—the kind that evokes feelings and can help the viewer identify with the protagonists.

 BEATRIZ AT DINNER (2017)

Miguel Arteta and Mike White’s third film working together (Chuck and Buck; The Good Girl) is bizarrely prescient given that it was written in late 2015/16 prior to the disastrous election last fall.

The protagonists are a Mexican immigrant (Salma Hayek) and an American billionaire real estate developer (John Lithgow). The film is a savage takedown of ugly white privilege but Beatriz at Dinner is also a character study of a woman who is hopeful and believes in humanity and the good in people.

Beatriz’s car breaks down at a wealthy client’s house and she is invited to stay and join them for a dinner celebrating a new business deal. The cast are superbly matched, the tension of their conversation and obvious class divide simmers throughout the dinner. It becomes inevitable that Hayek and Lithgow will duke it out, and their intense discussion becomes a provocative duel with clear parallels to our current social division.

THE CELEBRATION (1998) 

Thomas Vinterberg’s much lauded film centers on a large family gathering to celebrate Helfe’s (Henning Moritzen) 60th birthday. While most family celebrations have undercurrents, this lacerating Danish film, shot in the Dogme style, shows just how deeply unhappy families can be.

Eldest son Christian (Ulrich Thomsen) delivers a toast, full of “home truths,” that shocks everyone. Sure, the anecdote about how he and his late sister Linda would put things in people’s food without their noticing is amusing; but the section about dad taking baths and then taking Linda and Christian into his study to sexually abuse and rape them might put even the most deeply repressed folks off their meal.

GUESS WHO IS COMING TO DINNER (1967) 

Directed by Stanley Kramer, the film was Hollywood’s take on an incendiary topic, interracial marriage. At the time of its release, 50 years before Get Out, it was considered quite controversial — but even then some critics found it bland and patronizing. The film was a commercial hit that epitomized mainstream Hollywood’s liberal leanings at the time.

Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn are unforgettable as wealthy liberal parents whose daughter comes home to introduce them to her fiancé John Prentice (Sidney Poitier). Along with his parents both families face their own prejudices and anxieties about their union.

The film is a masterful study of society’s prejudices which still resonates today.

        EAT DRINK MAN WOMAN (1993)

Ang Lee’s mouth-watering opening scene of a meal being prepared sets the appropriate tone for this poignant film about Master Chef Chu (Sihung Lung) and his three grown daughters.

The family gathers around the table for dinner every Sunday. But whenever they get together, someone always seems to have an announcement that causes everyone else to go into a tailspin. In one of the film’s most ironic scenes, Chu, whose taste buds are failing, prepares a gorgeous meal that everyone refuses to eat. Life within the family gets more tangled when Chu marries Madame Liang, the single mother next door.

         ANNIE HALL (1977)

Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) visits his girlfriend’s family for Easter dinner in this classic comedy. While the “dynamite ham” is served to Grammy Hall, she stares at Alvy as if he’s a Hasid. Alvy squirms in disbelief, then breaks the third wall to illustrate the differences between the Singer family table and the Halls. It’s a hilarious split screen comparison: her family’s table talk concerns swap meets while his parents rowdily discuss diabetes.

Woody Allen is definitely one for playful social commentary and making the awkward realities into comedy. It is quite a feat, that in this scene Allen’s irritating character manages to make the audience sympathize with his ordeal.

         THE TRIP TO ITALY (2014)

Michael Winterbottom’s largely improvised 2010 film, The Trip, took comedians Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon on a restaurant tour around northern England. In this witty and incisive follow-up, Winterbottom reunites the pair for a new culinary road trip, retracing the steps of the Romantic poets’ grand tour of Italy and indulging in some clever banter and impersonation-offs. We especially love Brydon’s impersonation of a boy trapped in a box.

The Trip to Italy smoothly melds the comic interplay between Coogan and Brydon into quieter moments of self-reflection, letting audiences into their insightful ruminations on the nuances of friendship and the juggling of family and career. The result is a biting portrait of modern-day masculinity.

         DINNER REVELATIONS was originally published on FollowTheThread

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SQUARE ONE, WITH A TWIST

 In the beginning, DC Comics were solid and square — squirmingly un-ironic and chiseled of jaw. 

 Over the years, superheroes became more and more angst-ridden; and then turned ironic. 

Positive reviews of superhero movies are rare – and female superheroes, even rarer.  But with a morally upstanding heroine who could be Christopher Reeves’ kissing cousin, DC seems poised to score on both counts. 

    WONDER WOMAN (2017)

 Wonder Woman isn’t the first female character to front a superhero blockbuster.  Three previous projects bombed: Catwoman (Hallie Berry, 2004), Elektra (Jennifer Garner, 2005) and Supergirl (Helen Slater, 1983).

But this time it looks like the stars are aligning – reviews are pretty much all raves (notable exception: our homeboys at The Guardian).

The Wonder Woman character is an Amazonian demigoddess, but her real-life origin story is nearly as mythic.  The DC character was created in the late ‘40’s by psychologist William Moulton Marston who lived in a polyamorous relationship with two powerful women — his wife Elizabeth Holloway Marston and a former student Olive Byrne.  Byrne, in turn, was the niece of birth control trail blazer Margaret Sanger.  Plus, for what it’s worth, Marston also invented the lie detector.  Check it out in Smithsonian.   http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/origin-story-wonder-woman-180952710/

Since the iconic ‘70’s Linda Carter series there have been several unsuccessful attempts to revive the warrior princess with the lasso of truth.  The current incarnation (Israeli Gal Gadot) was reportedly the high point of last year’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.  Too sad, too bad, we missed that one – if you saw it, please weigh in.

The blockbuster was directed by Patty Jenkins, who has been doing TV (and winning Emmies) since she wrote and directed her astonishing first feature – Monster (2003, Charlize Theron as serial killer Aileen Wournos).

Accompanied by Chris Pine, straight arrow Diana Prince intervenes in WWI – a conflagration with clear cut battle lines, trenches, and bad guys.  Germans.  Which pretty much guarantees that POTUS will be joining the crowds this weekend.

    LOGAN (2017)

The culmination of a long descent into arty darkness, this is the remarkable final instalment in Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine series.

Writer/director James Mangold (Girl, Interrupted; 3:10 To Yuma) configures Jackman’s sendoff as dystopian superhero movie masquerading as character-driven western.

Logan is set ten years in the future along a walled-off Mexican border.  Jackman plays an arthritic Wolverine who has gone underground as a limo driver (Logan is his non-mutant name).  Society has less and less tolerance for mutants.  Doctor X (Patrick Stewart) has dementia; and Logan cares for this father figure with a gruff tenderness.  The family tableau is completed by a mutant wild child named Laura (young shooting star Dafne Keen)  who is making her way across the border.

The villain, the righteous cause, and the special effects kick in, as they must – inevitable as they are necessary.  But this is a fascinating and entertaining evolution of the standard superhero saga.

  DEADPOOL (2016)

Deadpool is the highest-grossing R rated film of all time.   We understand the rating for literal reasons – a nonstop stream of violence and foul language.  But to us this exercise in superhero extremity seemed so cartoony that the relentless splatter and profanity read as just par for the  course.

Likewise, we willingly overlooked the reliance on cliché that soured a lot of critics.  When we do consume superhero movies (saw this one on a plane),  we actually come to them for the reliable entertainment that well-executed clichés provide.  What we want from a film like Deadpool is that the beats be hit (check), that there is a certain novelty in the way it hits them (check), and that the movie is meta enough to comfortably wink and nod at itself (check).

 Deadpool is a beloved character in the Marvel pantheon, a joker who is hero and villain rolled into one, a hyperkinetic trickster with a self-justifying moral code who doesn’t stop long enough to take his angst too seriously.

    GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, VOLUME 1 (2014)

Guardians is a playful hybrid of space opera and superhero.  It takes place today, but in a grimy, pirate-ridden part of a far, far away galaxy.  Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) is an earthy but wholesomely appealing sometime thief and gun for hire who would like to be known by the ridiculous sobriquet of Star Lord.  Raised as an earthling, he has a metaphysical past and was stolen in youth after the death of his earth mother who bequeathed him a soundtrack of 80s music.

Through various misadventures he accumulates a motley but powerful band of misfits.   The green assassin Gamora (Zoe Saldana), the bulbously muscled and righteous Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista), the virtually indestructible tree humanoid Groot (Vin Diesel), and the incredibly smart and larcenous mutant android raccoon Rocket (Bradley Cooper).  This uneven group of goons for hire find themselves reluctantly positioned as saviors of the galaxy.

Surprisingly, the Guardians series was the brainchild of a young woman screenwriter.  In 2009 NYU graduate Nicole Perlman was accepted into Marvel’s screenwriting program and offered a list of obscure Marvel franchises.  Guardians was her unlikely choice.  Years and drafts later, the project made it onto the production slate and director James Gunn (sci-fi/comedy/horror film Slither) was brought on in 2012.

The film is remarkably tight for an origin story, and was so much fun that the recently released Volume 2 felt like a flimsy but entertaining anthology of riffs on the colorful characters from the first one.  But who are we to judge – box office on the sequel is outpacing the first and may cross a billion dollars.

  THE DARK KNIGHT (2008)

Despite the dreaded sequel syndrome, there are a handful that are universally regarded as even better than their predecessor.  One of them is the 2004 Sam Raimi/Tobey McGuire Spider-Man 2.

Dark Knight is Christopher Nolan’s singular follow-up to his complex, haunted reinvention of the franchise, Batman Begins.  With a deeply disturbed and disturbing first-among-equals performance, Heath Ledger stole the ultimate Joker mantle from Jack Nicholson; Ledger’s pre-release death and posthumous Oscar win added a chilling real-life resonance to a film that would have been one of the definitive superhero films of all time anyway.

With Christian Bale, Morgan Freeman, Micheal Caine, Gary Oldham, Maggie Gyllenhal, et al.

  SUPERMAN (1978) 

When he won the part of Superman/Clark Kent, Christopher Reeve was a tall, skinny kid just out of Juilliard, with a lot of Shakespeare under his belt.  His most notable role had been a Broadway run playing Katherine Hepburn’s grandson.

Richard Donner was an experienced TV director who had just broken away from the pack with a very successful Exorcist knock-off, The Omen.

Together, they launched the modern superhero movie.  Donner cast Hollywood’s best (Gene Hackman, Marlon Brando) and wanted the movie to be relatively realistic, but with a constant undercurrent of humor.  Reeves saw Superman/Clark as a dual role.  The Man of Steel is a nice, modest Midwestern boy, and Clark is modeled on Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby – but Cary Grant as he might be played by a Midwestern boy.  It’s fascinating to watch Reeve turn the Clark character on and off.

There are lots of special effects, executed well, and with traditional cinematic craft – rear projection, travelling matte shots, blue screen, etc.  In other words, analogue – faker and yet strangely more realistic than CGI.

Like Wonder Woman, this Superman is notably light on angst. Despite losing his parents and his entire planet, Superman has always been remarkably well adjusted.  His biggest internal conflict is not being able to tell Lois (Margot Kidder) that the chump in glasses standing next to her is really the hunky guy she’s in love with.

  SQUARE ONE, WITH A TWIST was originally published on FollowTheThread

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REVEL IN CUBAN MUSIC

20 years ago the Buena Vista Social Club documentary and album were released to worldwide acclaim. Afro-Cuban music is still some of the most vibrant and infectiously rhythmic music in the world.

The Buena Vista Social Club is the story of a group of musicians who were trapped by history but who were also ultimately granted a reprieve, and as result revived a genre that was almost lost.

This week with the release of our friend Lucy Walker’s new film Buena Vista Social Club: Adios we celebrate the sounds and history of Cuban music.

BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB: ADIOS (2017)

Lucy Walker (Wasteland and Crash Reel) brings us the sequel to Buena Vista Social Club which exposed the world to Cuba’s vibrant musical culture with a 1997 album and Wim Wenders’ documentary a couple years later. Now, against the backdrop of Cuba’s unique musical history, we hear the band’s story as they reflect on their remarkable careers and the extraordinary circumstances that brought them together.

Since the film’s release, many of the members of the Buena Vista Social Club – including Ibrahim Ferrer, Compay Segundo, Ruben Gonzalez and Orlando “Cachaíto” López – have died. But the sequel deftly and thoughtfully reflects on their legacy and efforts by surviving members Omara Portuondo, Manuel “Guajiro” Mirabal and Barbarito Torres to keep the group’s music alive.

“The music and the culture of Cuba are very much intertwined. So as these artists share their music, they are also sharing their incredible history. We are able to experience the last hundred years of the country’s history through their eyes,” producer Zak Kilberg said in a statement.

Some of these musicians lived into their seventies and eighties – and nineties in Compay’s case – before finding the type of global success that came with Buena Vista Social Club. Despite that, there is an optimism in their story that is unique and powerful. The Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club’s final tour also brought the group to the White House. There they performed for Barack Obama – just a few months after America restored diplomatic relations with Cuba for the first time in 54 years.

“For nearly two decades, this group has been a symbol of the strong bonds between the Cuban and American people. Bonds of friendship, culture and of course music,” the president said at the time.

BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB (1999)

Wim Wenders’ film documents how eclectic guitarist and roots music advocate Ry Cooder brought together this ensemble of legendary Cuban musicians to record an album and to perform three times with a full line-up: twice in Amsterdam in April 1998 and at Carnegie Hall on the 1st of July.

Even though it’s just 110 miles from Florida, travel to Cuba was restricted for over fifty years following the Cuban Missile Crisis — so for the NYC concert many of the artists were setting foot in States for the first time. The film captures their reactions to this experience, plus footage of the sell-out concerts. It also includes interviews back in Cuba with each of the main performers.

The Oscar-nominated documentary includes appearances by Ry & Joaquim Cooder, Ibrahim Ferrer, Ruben Gonzales, Eliades Ochoa, Omara Portuondo, Compay Segundo and many other renowned Cuban musicians.

          NOSOTROS LA MÚSICA (WE ARE THE MUSIC) (1964)

Cuban director Rogelio Paris’s documentary provides an incisive overview of the Cuban music scene before and after the Cuban revolution, 1940 – 1960 capturing the mood and vitality of Havana during its heyday.

Never before and never since has the diverse panorama of Cuban music been captured with quite as much style and cinematic flare. Filmed in the heady days of the 1960s, Nosotros la músicais is impregnated with the experimental spirit that put post-revolutionary Cuban cinema on the map. From the huge crumbling urban solares (apartment buildings) and callejones (alleys), to the flashy nightclubs, and finally to the rural jam sessions and church meetings of the island’s eastern mountains, director Paris goes deep into the soul of Cuban music and finds a stunning diversity often glossed over by foreign film crews.

The film, which has become a cult-like object of rediscovery, presents songs, popular music, and dances through a mix of Free Cinema and musical theater by an amazing range of locally and internationally famous performers of the time — Bola de Nieve, Celeste Mendoza, Elena Burke, Charanga Francesa, the Ignacio Piñeiro Septet, and various carnival troupes from Havana.

  SWORN TO THE DRUM: A TRIBUTE TO FRANCISCO AGUABELLA (1995)

Les Blank documented American roots music for nearly fifty years. With this film he captures the rhythms of Latin jazz as transmitted by Cuban born percussionist Francisco Aguabella, a master of the conga drum who recorded with Frank Sinatra, Dizzy Gillespie and The Doors.

A revered figure in Afro-Cuban and Latin jazz drumming, Aguabella has been called “…a virtual Rosetta stone of African culture, who has been highly influential in the growth of Latin jazz, pop and fusion in the U.S.”

For Aguabeila, who migrated to the USA in 1957, drumming is an integral part of his santeria religion—he’s a master of the bata, a special ceremonial drum. Blank’s film explores Aguabella’s drumming styles, his religion, and features interviews with associates such as dance innovator Katherine Dunham and bassist ‘Cachao’ Lopez. But it’s the music itself that makes the most powerful case for Aguabella’s genius — and Blank’s film has plenty of it.

NIGHT IN HAVANA: DIZZY GILLESPIE IN CUBA (1989) Focusing on one of the key figures in both bebop and Afro-Cuban jazz, this only film by director John Holland follows American jazz legend Dizzy Gillespie on a spring 1985 journey to forbidden island of the Caribbean. Gillespie defied US sanctions to travel to Cuba for a series of shows for the first time since Fidel Castro came to power, and perform at the fifth annual International Jazz Festival of Havana.

The film features a lot of performance with side men like Cuban trumpeter Arturo Sandoval, a Gillespie protégé who would eventually defect to the States. There are interviews, performance, and wonderful scenes of Gillespie mixing with crowds of eager locals and children. In concert footage, the balloon-cheeked musician plays “A Night in Tunisia” and “Cubana Bop”, among other favorites. In interviews, the musician speaks about his past and the musical compositions which inspired him.

    CON TODO MI AMOR RITA / WITH ALL MY LOVE, RITA (2000)

Prolific Cuban documentary director Rebeca Chávez brings us this profile of the great Cuban singer and actress Rita Montaner (1900-1958). She achieved international fame as Rita de Cuba – but in her homeland she was known as “La Única (the one and only).”

A classically trained pianist and singer, and a natural actress, Montaner became an international star of theater, film, radio, and television, performing in New York with Xavier Cugat and Al Jolson, in Paris with Josephine Baker, but always returning to Cuba where she was an enduring radio and stage celebrity. The documentary humanizes her mythical stature through personal accounts, recreations, and visual documentation of her professional life.

REVEL IN CUBAN MUSIC was originally published on FollowTheThread

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WOMEN GONE WILD

WOMEN GONE WILD

Even though the number of women directors and show runners is still small, the ones that do break through are continually amazing us. 

Especially when it comes to talking about sex.  Maybe male artists have had so many more centuries and opportunities to explore these issues onscreen that the male POV seems a bit stale, tame and cliched comparison. 

Maybe these female characters are so impactful  because women are finally getting a voice at this moment when gender is fluid and censorship is dead, giving them a lot more creative leeway.  And maybe women are just naturally more explicit when it comes time to time about sex and the rest of the world (men) are just now getting to hear that dialogue.  

Our picks this week are provoked by Jill Soloway’s hot, shocking and artful new Amazon series I Love Dick.  Be forewarned, this is a pretty Amazon-centric week.

  I LOVE DICK (2017)

 Kathryn Hahn plays Chris Kraus, a floundering NYC filmmaker who accompanies her husband Sylvere (Griffin Dunne) to his writing fellowship in Marfa, Texas.  There she becomes instantly, obsessively, erotically fixated on the cowboy artist who runs the place.  His name is Dick and he’s played by Kevin Bacon.

Hahn’s character is a bubbling mess, with no discernable shame or boundaries.  She immediately becomes known as “The Holocaust Wife” (Sylvere writes about the Holocaust) and starts frantically stalking Dick.

Meanwhile she records her obsession in a shameless series of letters, uses her erotic fantasies to rekindle the couple’s moribund sex life, and steals weed from the younger fellows.

I Love Dick is simultaneously arty, head-turning and erotic.  And, features a hell of a lot of anatomy, if you care about that kind of thing.

Trailer:    Series:  

  AFTERNOON DELIGHT (2013)

In the week before it dropped we were hearing a lot of noise about I Love Dick; and we’re also admirers of Transparent.  So we decided to go back and watch the feature film that brought Soloway into the spotlight.  There’s a marked family resemblance between this movie and Dick.

In the film Kathryn Hahn plays an LA stay-at-home mom who lives in a spectacular Silverlake home.  A wall of sexual apathy has halted marital relations with her app developer husband (Josh Radnor) and she’s desperate for something more stimulating than the momsters at the JCC preschool.

The couple goes to a strip joint with some adventurous friends and the husband buys her a lap dance with blonde pole rider McKenna (Juno Temple).  When something starts happening in her crotch, she freaks out.

But this is a Soloway character.  Within a few days she has stalked and befriended the stripper and installed McKenna in the spare bedroom under the pretext of saving her.

Things escalate from there – in ways that are both surprising and provocative — until the inevitable explosion.

Part of what’s remarkable is the lack of bourgeois moralizing and the extremes to which both Soloway and Hahn are willing to push the character as she reconnects with her lost libido.

      FLEABAG (2016)

The next two picks are UK imports.

Fleabag is a comic tragedy in six terse episodes. Within the first five minutes of the first episode our heroine is talking intimately to us (the camera) as she describes what is happening to her just out of frame – taking it up the bum.

Our heroine is the owner of a failing tea shop in London which she started with her best friend, now deceased, who died a semi-suicide, leaving behind a pet guinea pig.  She tells her story with charm and black humor, enticing us along until we realize that both we and her have been waltzing into the toothy jaws of an emotional trap.

As writer/star Phoebe Waller-Bridge pointed out in a recent Q&A, throughout the series you don’t actually see much of anything;  and yet, because of the intimate soliloquys, it feels like one of the filthiest TV shows you’ve ever experienced.

At the beginning of the series, Fleabag is so blithe about her escapades that you feel like she just has a very healthy (if somewhat hyperactive) sex drive. But slowly you realize that her constant need for transgression (sex, lying,  thievery) are attempts to cover up a brutal secret that is threatening to destroy her.

Yet even though that secret is tangled up with sex, it is not about her sexuality per se, but about the tangled way that the guilt it expresses itself.

      CATASTROPHE (2015-17)

Is this just the way of the world – in most of these shows about female sexuality, men, heterosexual men, tend to be pretty one-dimensional.  Just like in men’s stories, the opposite sex is a black box — we seldom get any idea of what is really going on with them, or why.

Which is why we love Catastrophe – it’s much more honest than any comparable American show, but it’s also about a couple and we get to see both sides of their story.

The show’s title comes from Zorba the Greek: “Wife, children, house, everything.  The whole catastrophe.”

The series is written and produced by the female star, Sharon Horgan (Sharon) and was co-created with American comic Rob Delaney (Rob).

The seminal catastrophe here is a wild, zipless, carnal week in London, after which Sharon comes up pregnant.  Even though they barely know each other, Rob steps up and moves to London, where they marry and have the baby.

It’s a comedy, like our other picks here, but what sets it apart is that the characters seem more like adults, meaning that they fuck up constantly but actually must and do take responsibility for it, which makes it less outrageous than these other shows, and maybe less revelatory.

But also more relatable. The show feels a couple degrees more honest than most about what it’s like to try and hold it together as a couple in today’s world.

  TINY FURNITURE (2010)

Tiny Furniture is most interesting as Lina Dunham’s preparatory sketch for Girls.  The subject matter is essentially the same – smart, privileged, sexual young women who are so scared by their own power and options that they retreat into infantile behaviors to avoid responsibility for the questionable choices they make.

That may sound like we were not fans of Girls.  But we were.   It was surprising– not consistently but often enough that we kept coming back despite our frustrations with the characters’ lack of progress.

In Tiny Furniture, Dunham (her character’s name is Aura) comes back after college to live with her mother and sister (played by Dunham’s sister and mother, who actually photographs tiny houses).  Indulgence and chaos ensue.

The film won Best Narrative Feature at SXSW and won Dunham Best New Director at the Indie Spirit Awards.

    THE PIANO (1993)

When Kevin Bacon’s Dick tells Kathryn Hahn’s Holocaust Wife that women can’t make good films because they’ve been oppressed for too long, she sputters out names: Sally Potter… Jane Campion…

Jane Campion’s signature film is an enchanting and powerful fable.  Campion seduces us into traveling with Holly Hunter’s mute piano player as she grows into possession of her sexuality and is severely punished for it.

There’s both a parallel and a disconnect between the muscular figure of Harvey Keitel and Kevin Bacon’s shirtless Dick.  Dick is a self-constructed sexual archetype, and even though the self-construction world, it makes him a figure of farce.  Keitel’s character is also an archetype,  but more authentic and thus more romantic, willing to prove he has enough integrity to earn a place in the heroine’s world.

This story, with its lack of irony, had to be set in an exotic past.  And that setting, enhanced by the hypnotic score, opened the movie up to a much wider audience than it could have reached in another form.

Jane Campion became the first and only woman to win the Palme d’Or, and The Piano won three Academy awards: Best Actress for Hunter, Best Supporting Actress for young Anna Paquin, and Best Original Screenplay for  Campion.

WOMEN GONE WILD was originally published on FollowTheThread

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COPPOLA FILM GENES

Francis Ford Coppola’s nuclear family has amassed 8 Oscars and 24 nominations while the extended family has racked up even more awards and exerted an extraordinary influence in the arts. The Coppolas and the Hustons are the only families with Oscars spanning three generations.

At 81, Francis Ford’s wife Eleanor Coppola is making her feature film debut with Paris Can Wait. For this week’s list we take a look at the debut films of each Coppola director.

 PARIS CAN WAIT (2017) 

Although this is her first scripted feature, Eleanor has made several documentaries, including the remarkable Apocalypse Now documentary Hearts of Darkness.

Paris Can Wait is somewhat autobiographical. In 2009, Eleanor Coppola was accompanying her husband to the Cannes Film Festival when she fell ill and decided to stay behind as he traveled on to Budapest. A French associate of Francis’ offered to drive her to the Paris airport and a script was born.

The film stars Alec Baldwin as the director husband and Diane Lane as his wife. Arnaud Viard is the business associate, a charming Gallic rogue who is happy to squire her on a tour of some of the finest meals in Provence.

What should have been a seven-hour drive turns into a carefree two-day adventure complete with diversions involving picturesque sights, fine food and wine, humor, wisdom and romance, reawakening Anne’s senses and giving her a new lust for life.

If you are a foodie and/or Francophile than this film should hit your sweet spot.

   YOU’RE A BIG BOY NOW (1966) 

Francis and Eleanor had already been married for three years when this film was submitted as his graduate thesis to the UCLA film school. It subsequently became his first film to receive widespread distribution.

Sporting an electric who’s who of iconic 60’s talent that includes Karen Black, Rip Torn, Geraldine Page, Julie Harris and Elizabeth Hartman—as well as an outstanding soundtrack by The Lovin’ Spoonful—Coppola’s early gem fits somewhere between fizzy British coming-of-age comedies and the more mature attack of films like 1967’s The Graduate.

Bernard Chanticleer (Peter Kastner) is a very nice young man anxious to step out into the “adult world.” His plan is to move out of his parents’ Long Island house into an eighth-floor Greenwich Village walkup – and try to convince someone of the opposite sex to share his new “liberated lifestyle” with him.

Elizabeth Hartman bewitchingly plays the free spirit who tempts Bernard. Karen Black makes her screen debut as the love object that lovesick Bernard overlooks and Geraldine Page nearly steals the show with her Academy Award-nominated performance as Bernard’s possessive mother.

It’s a difficult film to track down with only a DVD version available on Amazon but it is a must as a precursor to Francis Ford Coppola’s later works.

   CQ (2002)

Francis and Eleanor’s son Roman Coppola had already spent ten years directing commercials, music videos and second unit for his dad, sister and Wes Anderson by the time he came out with this debut feature. It centers on an international film crew making a low-budget, Barbarella-like feature in Paris in 1969. The film is called Dragonfly and is being directed by Andrezej (Gérard Depardieu), who wishes to make a revolutionary work rather than the tacky fluff it is becoming. He is fired by the film’s producer Enzo (Giancarlo Giannini) when he can’t produce a satisfactory climactic scene.

The director job is finally handed to the film’s young editor, Paul (Jeremy Davies). Paul begins to fall for the leading lady (Angela Lindvall), but must retrieve footage of the feature stolen by Andrezej and try to keep the troubled production together.

The film is an ode to the European films of the 60s: Danger: Diabolik, The 10th Victim and Modesty Blaise.

           THE VIRGIN SUICIDES (2000)

Daughter Sofia Coppola’s acclaimed debut film follows the Lisbons, who on the surface appear to be a healthy, successful 1970s family living in a middle-class Michigan suburb. The dad is a math teacher and his wife is a rigid religious mother of five attractive teenage daughters who catch the eyes of the neighborhood boys.

When 13-year-old Cecilia commits suicide, the family retreats into isolation and the remaining girls are quarantined from social interaction by their protective mother. But the strategy backfires, their seclusion makes the girls even more intriguing to the obsessed boys who will go to absurd lengths for a taste of the forbidden fruit.

            PALO ALTO (2014) 

Gia Coppola is from the next generation, daughter of Francis and Eleanor’s first son, Gian-Carlo, who was born before Francis even finished grad school.   Her first film follows shy, sensitive April (Emma Roberts), the class virgin, a soccer player and frequent babysitter for her coach, Mr. B. (James Franco). Teddy (Jack Kilmer) is an introspective artist whose best friend and sidekick Fred (Nat Wolff) is an unpredictable live wire with few filters or boundaries.

While April negotiates a dangerous affair with Mr. B., and Teddy performs community service for a DUI – secretly carrying a torch for April, who may or may not share his affection – Fred seduces Emily (Zoe Levin), a promiscuous loner who seeks validation through sexual encounters. One high school party bleeds into another as April and Teddy finally acknowledge their mutual affection, and Fred’s escalating recklessness spirals into chaos.

The film is an unflinching portrait of adolescent lust, boredom and self-destruction and astonishingly insightful debut film.

            Cage was born Nicolas Kim Coppola, son of Francis’ brother August. Sonny was his first and last foray into directing. The film follows a very unconventional family as they struggle to overcome personal and financial adversity. Young Sonny (James Franco) returns home to New Orleans from Army service to find his mother Jewel (Brenda Blethyn), a prostitute, in dire financial straits, with her marketability decreasing exponentially as her age increases.

Jewel takes heart at her son’s return; she raised him to be a male prostitute and his mid-’20s vitality should be able to provide a much-needed boost to her family’s income — which has increasingly depended on her boyfriend Henry’s (Harry Dean Stanton) small-time thievery, as well as the income generated by Jewel’s new recruit, Carol (Mena Suvari).

Sonny initially scoffs at the thought, having been offered a chance for a legitimate job from his Army buddy (Scott Caan), but when that possibility falls through, Sonny finds he has no choice but to work for his mother.

The film tanked at the box office but did not dampen the burgeoning career of its star James Franco.

COPPOLA FILM GENES was originally published on FollowTheThread

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BLUM FOR THE BUCK

  Frequent readers may have noticed that here at The Thread we tend to crush on first films.  Our knee-jerk opinion is that it’s the low budgets.  We’re using this forum to personally appeal to President Trump for an executive order capping feature budgets at $5 million.

 Or, he could just appoint Jason Blum Secretary of Movie Distribution. 

 Blum’s company, Blumhouse, is on a roll; which Blum modestly describes as just that – a run of good luck, enhanced by his training at the knee of Harvey Weinstein in that bad boy’s Miramax heyday.

 The Blumhouse money machine spits out low budget genre flicks that seldom lose money and regularly yield huge returns on modest budgets.  Par exemple, the incredibly profitable Paranormal Activity franchise, or this year’s M. Night Shyamalan resuscitation, Split; tracking at $275 million and counting. 

In 2014 he launched BH Tilt, as a production machine for even lower cost films.  But under that monicker he’s also produced and distributed artier indies, like Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash, Jordan Peele’s recent humor/horror behemoth Get Out, and, via Sundance, J.D. Dillard’s Sleight, which is out in limited release.  

  SLEIGHT (2017)

Charming newcomer Jacob Latimore plays a street magician who stepped in to care for his little sister after their parents passed.  He supplements his income by dealing drugs for a local dealer played, in a surprising dark turn by good boy Dule Hill (of West Wing and Psyche).

When things inevitably go wrong his sister is kidnapped and he’s forced reveal some extraordinary talents that he’s tried to keep hidden.

Sleight is actually not Dillard’s first movie; like Chazelle and Moonlight’s Barry Jenkins, his first film sank – but in Dillard’s case, really deep.  We couldn’t find it anywhere. Then, like Chazelle, he sharpened his story chops by bumming around Hollywood as a writer and eventually came up with a genre mashup that leverages the attractiveness of its leading man into an entertaining confection.

  WHIPLASH (2014)

Whiplash was a surprising addition to the Blumhouse slate – a lone drama punctuating a long list of mostly horror genre films.  The commonality is exploiting a savvy knowledge of genre conventions.

When it came time to make Whiplash, Chazelle had already taken a shot at his heart’s desire in the form of his student musical feature Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench – which got a lot of praise, but no distribution.   He cannily constructed Whiplash as a picture-perfect breakout first feature – based on personal experience and tailored to a tight budget, an into-the-crucible story of artistic coming of age.

He succeeded rather brilliantly, starting out with a short feature at Sundance 2013, which secured funding for the feature.

If you don’t know the story: an ambitious young jazz drummer goes to an elite music school where he falls under the influence of a teacher who is either sadistic, brilliant, or both.

It’s a short, satisfying entertainment served up with an aroma of highbrow aspiration.  It’s a very well-wrought film, but its awards success is a tribute to how much we love the myth of the first film, as well as our hunger for the one thing that the studio system has trouble producing – small, well-told stories.

    PARANORMAL ACTIVITY (2009)

Split may be Blumhouse’s most profitable film, but in terms of budget multiples, it’s doubtful anything is ever going to beat Paranormal Activity.  This first film was produced on a budget of  $15,000 and went on to gross $193m – not to mention spinning off six sequels.  We’ll spare you the math – that’s a return of almost 13,000 times its budget, versus a measly 30x for Split.

Paranormal Activity is an indoors Blair Witch Project – it very successfully pretends to be found footage, shot by the couple in the film, or often, eerily, caught by a locked-off camera trained on them as they sleep.  The pace is glacial (by horror film standards), the special effects minimal, and yet it’s utterly terrifying.

A young couple has moved into an apartment and the woman senses that the place is haunted — or, more accurately, possessed.  Well, that’s kind of true, but that’s only part of the story.  The man becomes obsessed with capturing what’s happening on a new video camera – and ends up being sorry that he did.

This was a first film for director Oren Peli.  Jason Blum discovered it, loved it, sold the remake rights to Paramount, then convinced them not to remake it but to release the film very much as it was.   Like the creators of Blair Witch, Peli has never quite replicated the chemistry of his singular first film.

  THE SIXTH SENSE (2014)

This year, Blumhouse released what may be its highest box office film ever, Split.  It’s a split personality film from M. Night Shyamalan, set in the same fictional universe as Unbreakable.  The budget was relatively high for Blumhouse – $9 million.  But it was a gamble that paid off – three months in, the film is tracking at $275 million, and Shyamalan is working on another script.

Shyamalan had already directed two films when he came up with the film that seems like his first, Sixth Sense.  His student film was Pray With Anger, about a young Hindu American man going back to India.  It was not until after a second religion-themed film that he saw dead people and sold his spec script for $3m and the right to direct.

Sixth Sense is not a Blumhouse film; we bring it up as the exception that proves the rule.  With Willis in the lead, the budget went to $60 million – but it made it all back and more.  And here’s the thing about sophomore slump – or in his case, senior slump, since his first two films were financed by his doctor parents and their friends.    Shyamalan conceived the script at a moment when he wasn’t sure if he’d ever direct a third film.  So even tho he’s done some great work, and some kind of crappy work that made a lot of money, he’s never done anything quite as elegantly effective as Sixth Sense.

And if you’re curious about Shyamalan’s low budget return to form with  Blumhouse, Split is recently available on video.

      THE PURGE (2013)

Blumhouse has monkeyed with the traditional mathematics of the movie business: make enough hits pay for the flops.  Small budget genre films keep flop loss to a minimum.  And the hits can penetrate the stratosphere.  When that happens, you crank out the sequels.

There’s a kernel of social commentary imbedded at the heart of The Purge — in a post-meltdown America, the ruling party creates one day a year when all laws and public services are suspended, allowing the populace to vent their pent-up rage in a Second Amendment Dionysian frenzy.

Another piece of the puzzle is to hire promising up-and-coming directors.  In this case, James DeMonaco, a seasoned writer who was just coming off his first directing gig, a short-lived crime drama called Staten Island.  DeMonaco was recommended for the Purge job by one of the stars One of the stars of Staten Island — Ethan Hawke.

The movie cost $3m and made $89m.  DeMonaco has directed two Purge sequels.

    IN A VALLEY OF VIOLENCE (2016)

Blum sometimes makes missteps – but even then, they tend to be colorful.

As it turns out, the meister of horror once ran a theater company with Ethan Hawke, and was finally able to lure his old pal over to play a true crime writer who finds a nasty box of home movies in Sinister.  The film was directed by Scott Derrickson (coming off The Exorcism of Emily Rose and The Day The World Stood Still and heading for Dr. Strange).  The budget was $3m, the boxoffice was $78m, and everybody made a lot of money.

After The Purge, Hawke really wanted to make a western, and in a year or so Blum found him one.  To direct it, he hired prolific horror director Ti West, who invested it with a laconic sense of genre and a sly sense of humor, which, along with the casting of John Travolta as a corrupt sheriff renders it very enjoyable – and a bit campy.

Hawke is a drifter who rolls into town.  His very presence provokes the town bully, who Hawke then proceeds to humiliate.  The bully also happens to be Travolta’s son.  Even though Hawke leaves town when suggested, the son seeks revenge, which then sets off a satisfying cycle of moral retribution and karmic balancing.  Maybe we should put “satisfying” in quotes, but it is a western.

Overall, critics liked it: but audiences stayed away in droves and it flopped as flat as a French pancake.

It all ends happily.  Ti West went on to join Shyamalan on Wayward Pines, Hawke is finishing up as writer/director on Blaze, his film about country singer Blaze Foley.

And Jason Blum is well on his way to a jillion dollars, small budget by small budget.

    BLUM FOR THE BUCK was originally published on FollowTheThread

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CANNIBAL COMEDY

The very thought of real cannibalism makes us sick – which is probably why we find it morbidly delightful in comedies.

To whet your appetite here is a link to a 1970 Monty Python cannibal skit:

We’re inspired this week by the release of the absurdist cannibal French film Slack Bay which premiered at Cannes 2016.

 SLACK BAY (2016) 

Director Bruno Dumont cites Peter Sellers, Monty Python, and Laurel and Hardy as cinematic influences for his delightful foray into his absurdist farce. 

His cast is a mashup of pros and amateurs. The elder Van Peteghems are played by the cream of French cinema, Juliette Binoche and Fabrice Luchini, while the Bruforts are played by local nonactors whose authentic gruffness undercuts the stars’ antic flamboyance beat for beat. Dumont raises conflicts of class, character, and gender into an off-kilter legend.

He is equally brazen with his bold mashup of genres — cops-and-cannibals, high-society-drawing-room, and rustic-outdoors comedy, set in a French seaside resort village in 1910. The bourgeois Van Peteghem clan vacation in their villa overlooking the bay; the Brufort family of mussel-gatherers and ferrymen live on a ramshackle farm in the lowlands. Several tourists have disappeared, and two loopy police inspectors investigate in vain—what they don’t know is that the Bruforts have been eating them.

As the grisly mysteries mount and love blossoms between the family’s transgender teen and the son of a local fisherman, Binoche and company ratchet the slapstick up to eleven.

THE COOK, THE THIEF, THE WIFE THE LOVER (1989) 

Peter Greenaway’s sumptuous genre-bender stars Helen Mirren as the wife to an English gangster named Albert Spica who finds herself trapped, offended, and disgusted by her husband’s thuggish ways, as night after night he takes over the dining hall of the restaurant he owns.

She spots a quiet bookish type who dines alone and becomes entangled in a secret affair with him—that is until her crook husband finds out. Spica kills the guy, but Mirren’s Georgina gets the last laugh—when she brings the body back to the restaurant’s chef, makes him cook her deceased lover, and forces her husband to eat the body.

     EATING RAOUL (1982)

Director/co-writer Paul Bartel stars as Paul Bland, who with his wife Mary (Mary Woronov) play a prudish married couple living in Hollywood who take to murdering swingers in their apartment building for a little extra cash.

Robert Beltran plays Raoul, a small time criminal who witnesses the Blands’ dirty business and strikes a bargain for his silence, sharing the profits from the murder victims (Raoul also strikes up a sexual relationship with Mary).

Eating Raoul successfully walks the tightrope between delight and disgust — its absurdist sense of humor makes it an enjoyable romp even when its subject matter becomes rather bleak.

Bartel, a graduate of the “Roger Corman School,” keeps things lively, and often times the movie plays like a sitcom gone pitch black. The characters were meant to return for a sequel entitled Bland Ambition, which Bartel wrote with original screenwriter Richard Blackburn, but it failed to materialize.

DELICATESSEN (1991) 

Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet became instant cult darlings with Delicatessen, their darkly delicious debut. Set in a steampunky, post-apocalyptic Paris, the movie concerns an apartment building and the building’s bizarre inhabitants.

Caro and Jeunet toy with the interrelationships among the tenants — in the film’s trailer, the squeaky springs of a couple making love echo, in one form or another, throughout the building.

The man making love in the trailer is the butcher (Jean-Claude Dreyfus), who serves as the de facto landlord of the building and offers up cannibalistic delicacies. Caro and Jeunet are working in full-on comic book mode here, and even the cannibalism is delivered on screen with a dash of madcap surrealism.

The movie’s combination of gruesomeness and absurdity has aged well, as have its playful touch with such a dark subject.

         SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET (2007)

Tim Burton’s adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s beloved 1979 musical, is based on the exploits of the so-called barber (Johnny Depp) who gives his customers too close a shave. This is old school horror movie stuff, with a touch of dark humor.

The cannibal part comes in when the grisly and greedy Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), becomes Todd’s partner in crime, disposing of the bodies by dicing them up into meat pies and serving them to the patrons of the pub she owns. Burton adds touches of his signature dark whimsy — such as a musical number composed of shots of people getting their throats slit.

There’s a love story here too, and a tale of revenge, plus Todd trying to reconnect with his long lost daughter. But on purely cinematic terms, it’s really all about the murders and the meat.

       CANNIBAL! THE MUSICAL (1993)

Before South Park, before Book of Mormon, Cannibal! was Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s low-budget first feature, based on Parker’s obsession with one of the grisliest episodes from the Old West – a guide eating his companions after running into trouble in the Rocky Mountains. Perfect material for a feel-good musical.

It references the ‘Donner Party’, the other infamous case of cannibalism from the era. Set in 1873, this musical focuses on Alfred Packer who is accused of cannibalizing members of his West-traveling party.

Given Matt & Trey’s sensibilities, it’s no surprise that the film is an absurdist farce—Japanese are cast as Indians, a cyclops’s eye spurts pus, and Alfred has a kung-fu fight with a fur trapper named Frenchy.

Cannibal! is surprisingly light on gore for a Troma Team release concentrating instead on sight gags, sex jokes, and absurd songs like “Shpadoinkle” and “Hang the Bastard.”

CANNIBAL COMEDY was originally published on FollowTheThread

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BULLETS GRATIA BULLETS

  With the release of Reservoir Dogs 25 years ago, Quentin Taremtino launched a thousand genre-bending would-be artistes.

Rabble-rousing British director Ben Wheatley, in league with his wife and collaborator Amy Jump, have been among the more successful. 

Free Fire is their latest project,  and they’ve decided to supercharge Chekov’s  edict about the gun in the first act (got to be used by the third): if a crate full of assault weapons appears in the first act, why not screw the plot and just let ‘er rip?   

Say what you will about the Wheatleys, they aren’t dull, so in their honor, this week we’ve picked a selection of “Super B’s” — films with auteur aspirations and genre roots, 

    FREE FIRE (2017)

British director Ben Wheatle seems perennially poised on the brink of that transformational Tarentino-style breakthrough.   His career started with a wild grab-bag of projects — animation, viral videos and adverts; TV shows (check out seasons 5&6 of our cult favorite Ideal and the whacked sketch series Modern Life).  With grade school sweetheart/wife/screenwriter/ collaborator Amy Jump he launched his online laboratory mrandmrswheatley.

In 2009 they dived into features with the 8 day/$30,000 Sopranos-meets-Mike-Leigh crime drama Down Terrace.

In their latest, they’ve virtually eliminated plot: if this is violence porn, who cares if the pizza delivery guy gets home?

It makes sense on at least one level – their last film, a style-driven adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s dystopian novel High-Rise was regarded as a noble failure at best.  So why not shoot for the mainstream with a Tarentino-meets-Richey bullet fest?  Starring, among others, Oscar winner Brie Larson.

    A FIELD IN ENGLAND (2013)

One of the reasons everybody holds out so much hope for the Wheatleys is that despite being steeped in pop/mainstream culture the Mr. and the Mrs. have a relentlessly arty  streak – as exhibited by their fourth film, the B&W historical drama A Field in England.

If they were satisfied with simply churning out cult classics, the Wheatleys might be happier puppies.  But you always get the feeling that they’re torn between a desire for a mainstream hit and critical acceptance; in interviews Wheatley roll calls all the right names: Roeg, Goddard, Cronenberg, Kubrick.

Shot on $300k in 13 days, A Field is set in the 17th century during the British civil wars – the period which inspired Hobbes famous “nasty, poor, brutish, and short.”  A Field in England hits every miserable base and adds in buried treasure, alchemy, and, just for good measure, some psychedelic mushrooms.

      RESERVOIR DOGS (1992)

We’re old enough to remember the tremor that Reservoir Dogs produced, foreshock to the earthquake of Pulp Fiction.  Despite the scores of imitators, nobody has been able to duplicate its louche brilliance.   Not even, for us, Guy Ritchie who was fun but slight.

  Of course you’ve seen it, probably more than once.  But it’s been a few years.  Don’t you want to watch it again?

    SHIVERS (1975)

The Wheatleys have done horror flicks too.  Canadian master  David Cronenberg used that genre to mine his own deep obsessions, resulting in widespread acclaim.

Shivers was Cronenberg’s first commercial feature and he used it to start his own subgenre (body horror; parasites erupting from victim’s stomachs, two years before Alien).  He married it to a cultural critique provocative enough to trigger arguments in the Canadian Parliament.

The whole film takes place in a antiseptic upscale apartment building.  An aging scientist – Hobbes, Dr. Emile Hobbes — kills a teenaged girl, cuts open her stomach and pours in acid; and then commits suicide.

Only gradually do we learn that Hobbes wasn’t psycho killer but an idealist desperately trying to save the world the world.  Believing that in the antiseptic modern world humans had lost touch with their deeper natures, he created a sluglike parasite to bring them back into balance.  And he believed so strongly that he implanted the sluglike parasite in his teenage mistress.  Oops – it infected her with irresistible sexual desire.  He kills her in a futile attempt to stop the parasite from spreading.

Too late patient zero has already screwed half the men in the building, and we watch the parasite spread like wildfire.  By the end of the movie the whole city is doomed.

Wheatley was following in Cronenberg’s footsteps when he adapted an unfilmable J.G. Ballard novel.  But Crash was something astounding you’d never seen before, whereas High-Rise was flashy but static. Not even Tom Hiddleston and Jeremy Irons could save it.

    THE RAID: REDEMPTION (2012)

 This kinetic tour de force of action and bullets is the bar that  Wheatley has to clear with Free Fire.  Even though it was made by a British film-school grad artistic pretensions are put aside for dead-on world-class genre.

Welsh director Gareth Ewans is 6’7” and for many years lived in Jakarta with his Indonesian wife and daughter.

After graduating from film school in Wales, he signed on to direct a documentary about pencak silat, an Indonesiam martial art form.  Through that he discovered pencak silat expert Iko Uwais working as a deliveryman and cast him in their first feature, the low-budget Merantau, which became a cult hit and led to two Raid films.

In The Raid, Iko Uwais plays Rama, member of a SWAT team who are trapped in a high rise when a gang raid goes wrong.  Rama and his fellow officers must then battle their way out of the complex fighting both drug lords and corrupt cops but enlisting unexpected help along the way.

Uwais also choreographed all the action sequences.

    A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1972)

Even though The Killing inspired them all, for violent choreography nothing trumps the Singin’ In The Rain sequence from A Clockwork Orange.   In a Guardian article, Wheatley recalls traveling to Paris to see it.

This was because Kubrick himself asked Warners to pull it in the UK after it was linked to several cases of juvenile violence and his family got threats.  It didn’t reappear in England until after Kubrick’s death.

As dystopian violence goes, it is still without parallel.  At the time, Kubrick toned it down in various ways for release in various countries; but even after all these years it’s still at the edge of the envelope, equally mesmerizing and disgusting.

      BULLETS GRATIA BULLETS was originally published on FollowTheThread

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MAD DOGS AND EXPLORERS

There have been explorers throughout history — but for some reason when we think of restless, obsessive, sweat-drenched souls wandering exotic lands in search of something that’s lost deep inside themselves, we always think first of Englishmen. 

British explorer Percy Fawcett traveled to the Amazon in search of a lost civilization, as chronicled in this week’s release The Lost City of Z.  Although we could have easily focused solely on Brits, we decided it would be fun to change it up this week by throwing in a few foreign nationals.     

    THE LOST CITY OF Z (2017)

New York-centric director James Gray ventured far beyond the five boroughs with this film based on the book by New Yorker writer David Grann.   It’s loosely based on the astonishing true story of British explorer Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam), who journeys into the Amazon at the dawn of the 20th century and discovers evidence of a previously unknown, advanced civilization that may have once inhabited the region.

Despite being ridiculed by the scientific establishment, who regard the indigenous peoples as “savages,” the determined Fawcett – supported by his devoted wife (Sienna Miller), son (Tom Holland) and aide de camp (Robert Pattinson) – returns time and again to his beloved jungle in an attempt to prove his case, until finally disappearing with his son in 1925.

Fawcett received one of the Royal Geographical Society’s highest medals for his work charting and exploring unknown territory in South America – but his fervent belief in a lost civilization somewhere in the Amazonian jungle was still regarded with extreme skepticism by many members.

      LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962)

David Lean’s epic follows the the true-life experiences of Arabist adventurer T.E. Lawrence, better known to the world as Lawrence of Arabia.

A young, idealistic British officer in WWI, Lawrence (Peter O’Toole in his break out role) is assigned to the camp of Prince Feisal (Alec Guinness), an Arab tribal chieftain and leader in a revolt against the Turks.

In a series of brilliant tactical maneuvers, Lawrence leads fifty of Feisal’s men in a tortured three-week crossing of the Nefud Desert to attack the strategic Turkish-held port of Aqaba. And following his successful raids against Turkish troops and trains, Lawrence’s triumphant leadership and unyielding courage gain him god-like status among his Arab comrades.

Screenwriters Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson used T. E. Lawrence’s own self-published memoir The Seven Pillars of Wisdom as a source.

    SCOTT OF THE ANTARCTIC (1948)

Charles Frend directed this 1950’s Technicolor hit.  Robert Falcon Scott (John Mills) was determined be the first man to reach the South Pole.  His journey starts off well, with three alternative modes of transportation — dogs, ponies and snow tractors.

Scott becomes increasingly concerned about the health of two of his men—Evans, who has a deep cut on his hand, and Oates, whose foot is frostbitten.  Evans dies and is buried under the snow.  Then realizing that his condition is slowing the team down, Oates sacrifices himself by walking out of the tent into a blizzard to his death, leaving with a  casual “I’m just going outside and may be away some time.”

The rest of the team are eventually trapped in their tent by a blizzard and die just 11 miles short of a supply depot.  Scott leaves behind the famous “I do not regret this journey…” entry in his diary.  The film is based on the true story and inspired by footage the expedition shot on the actual journey.

If all the firm-jawed heroism here is getting too much to bear, check out Monty Python’s lampoon “Scott of the Sahara” –  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=152tLmGkgZY

    THE ADVENTURES OF MARCO POLO (1938)

 John Ford directed this lavish adventure classic chronicling the exploits of the 13th-century explorer, played here by Gary Cooper. Accompanied by  his assistant, Binguccio (Ernest Truex) Marco endures shipwrecks, terrible sandstorms, and other natural disasters as he makes his way to China.

Once there, he is taken to the exotic court of Kublai Khan where Marco falls in love with the beautiful Princess Kukachin (played by Norwegian actress Sigrid Gurie).  The emperor’s adviser has other plans for the princess; plotting to overthrow the emperor, he banishes Marco.

Marco meets a bandit and talks the thief into helping him invade Peking to save Khan. A massive cavalry attack is launched against the great walled city and Polo vanquishes the defenders using his new invention — gun powder — and freeing the captured Princess. A young Lana Turner played one of the princess’ handmaidens.

Fantastical and absurdly racist by today’s standards (all actors are white, and even their accents are all over the map), the movie is worth watching as a swash-buckler in the Robin Hood vein and a monumental testament to the subjectivity of historical fiction .

    MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON (1990)

Director Bob Rafelson fulfilled a lifelong dream when he finally received backing to complete Mountains of the Moon. The film recreates the adventures of 19th century visionaries Sir Richard Burton (Patrick Bergin) and John Henning Speke (Iain Glen).

The heart of the film is the effort by Burton and Speke to discover the true source of the Nile river. This occurs well into the film, after several torturous scenes involving the injuries sustained by the protagonists during other expeditions — and the growing friendship that results.

Here at The Thread we’re admirers of both Rafelson (Five Easy Pieces) and Burton (who successfully impersonated a Muslim to circumambulate the Kaaba).  While the ultimate Burton film is yet to be made, Mountains is worthwhile for the rapport between its stars and the brilliant, sweeping cinematography of Roger Deakins.

    AGUIRRE – THE WRATH OF GOD (1972)

 As we researched this post, many sources agreed on one thing – if you’re going to get anywhere in the explorer business, it helps to be at least a little crazy.  The same may be true of the filmmakers who chronicle them.

The most famed and well-regarded collaboration between New German Cinema director Werner Herzog and his frequent leading man, Klaus Kinski, this epic historical drama was legendary for the difficulty of its on-location filming and the zealous obsession of Kinski in the title role.

Exhausted and near failure in its quest for riches, the 1650-51 expedition of Spanish conquistador Gonzalo Pizarro (Alejandro Repulles) bogs down in the impenetrable jungles of Peru. As a last-ditch effort to locate treasure, Pizarro orders a party to scout ahead for signs of El Dorado, the fabled seven cities of gold.

Traveling by river raft, the explorers are besieged by hostile natives, disease, starvation and treacherous waters. Crazed with greed and power, Aguirre takes over the enterprise, slaughtering anyone that opposes him. Nature and Aguirre’s own unquenchable thirst for glory render him insane, in charge of nothing but a raft of corpses and chattering monkeys.

Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes  (German title) was based on the real-life journals of a priest, Brother Gaspar de Carvajal (played in the film by Spanish actor Del Negro), who accompanied Pizarro on his ill-fated mission.

            “Jungles and deserts are at the extreme ends of the landscapes this planet has to offer, and both have enormous visual force. They also both hit back at idiots like me who challenge them by wanting to make films there.”    -Werner Herzog in A Guide For The Perplexed.

MAD DOGS AND EXPLORERS was originally published on FollowTheThread

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THE HARLOT EXPERIENCE

If there were as many harlots in the real world as there are on large and small screens, we’d all know a few.  But we don’t.   

 Then again, we don’t know any mobsters either.  As a dramatic archetype, the harlot sits on the fault line between sexual power and everyday subjugation.  Throw in a little titillation and boom – you’ve sold your series.  

Over the last 50 years, as censorship began to go extinct we’ve seen more and more dramas about prostitutes.   Feminist critique has added a new wrinkle — every new iteration of the whore-as-heroine story has to claim that it breaks new ground and radically re-invents the genre with a more female-friendly POV.    

 Harlots, the new UK copro that premiered last week on Hulu is no exception – and is the jumping off point for this week’s Thread. 

    HARLOTS (2017)

 Inspired by Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies, an 18th century Zagat’s of London prostitutes, the series was conceived, written, directed and produced by women, resulting in a “whore’s eye view” of the booming London sex trade.

The show is set in 1763. Samantha Morton, whose early roles included an impressive Jane Eyre in the late 90’s, dons costume once again, in a role radically different from the romantic and demure Jane.  What the characters do share is the single-minded determination and, strange to say, integrity – which Morton does so well.

Here she plays Margaret Wells, the proprietress of a “rooming house” in 1763 London.  She was sold by her mother for a pair of shoes, but has built her own establishment into the second most desirable knocking shop in London.

The next step is to move up to a better neighborhood and better (richer) class of clientele.  She plans to raise the capital by auctioning off her younger daughter’s virginity.  Her older daughter Charlotte (Jessica Brown Findlay, Lady Sybil of Downton Abbey) is already one of the most desirable prostitutes in London, with a besotted patron wrapped around her finger.

Mrs. Wells’ sworn enemy is Mrs. Quigley (Mike Leigh regular Leslie Manville), who runs the reigning upper class establishment and is determined to undermine the efforts of her rival.  They have deep history; Mrs. Quigley is the one who bought Wells off her mother, way back when.

Like its precursors, Harlots will benefit from the fact that in a whore’s tale plentiful nudity accompanied by a kinky slap-and-tickle is technically not gratuitous, but integral to the story.  Harlots further advances that theory by balancing its female exposure with equal doses of male flesh.

    THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE (2016)

 This series was based on a spotty 2009 experimental indie by Steven Soderbergh.  The lead in the film was played by sometime porn star Sasha Grey.

Reconceived as a television series, the show was picked up by Starz.  Soderbergh hired two independent film directors, Lodge Kerrigan and Amy Seimetz, to write, direct and produce all 13 episodes of the series.

The heroine is Christine Reade, played by Elvis’ oldest granddaughter Riley Keogh in a remarkable breakout performance.  Christine is a law student drawn into the eponymous world of high-end escorts.  As it turns out, she has the perfect psychological profile for the work.

Perhaps too perfect – after a couple of by-the-book episodes, the series spins out into a complex Breaking Bad-style transformation story, where the sex story takes a back seat to complex elements of legal thriller and greed, with Christine at the center.

But fear not – this is a Starz series after all, so there is plenty of sex throughout, both gratuitous and absolutely integral.

    SECRET DIARY OF A CALL GIRL (2007) In the world of UK drama, Harlots is partially a reaction to Secret Diary; and while we weren’t deeply offended by it as some people were, we did find it too fluffy and slick to be either compelling or convincing.

Devised and written by British playwright Lucy Prebble, with singer-turned-actress Billie Piper as Belle.  The series was based on a popular blog authored under the nom de plume of “Belle du Jour”.

We like a lot of dumb things, but for some reason found Secret Diary too fluffy and soulless to be engaging or even really entertaining.  Admittedly, we only hung in for one episode; but maybe that in itself says something, given our weakness for gratuitous nudity.  Billie Piper herself was quite entertaining – it was her character and the whole setup that left us cold.  Fictional prostitutes don’t have to be relentlessly grim and brutally authentic.  But one of the things we like about Harlots is that there seems to be enough vinegar to balance the story.

Despite our concerns, enough people liked it to sustain four seasons, so we seem to be in the minority here  — form your own opinion.

    JEANNE DIELMAN, 23 QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES (1975)

Far, far across the spectrum from fluff, Jeanne Dielman is the epitome extreme realist/minimalist integrity.

In long, slow takes from a static or slow-moving camera, we watch in exquisite and excruciating detail the mundane activities of a middle class single mother as she moves through the flat where she and her son live.  Routine is the anchor of Jeanne’s life (played by French actress Delphine Seyrig).  As we gradually become aware, the mundane is the only thing that holds Jeanne’s increasingly fragile world together.

Jeanne supports herself and her son by hosting male visitors in the afternoon.  These visits are treated with the same patient, mesmerizing, and uninflected observation as every other detail of Jeanne’s life.

Chantal Akerman’s revolutionary and radically serious feminist film is a masterpiece, cult classic, and a biting commentary on the forces that drive women to prostitution.

With real-time pacing and a 3:21 runtime, this movie is just not made to watch on the couch.  It’s worth seeking out at one of the frequent revivals.  Sitting through it is excruciating, but it’s impossible to accurately describe the impact.

Akerman made the film when she was 24, on a budget of $120,000.  She died two years ago at age 65, succumbing to a prolonged bout of depression.

While this 2009 interview with Akerman isn’t a substitute for watching the film, it’s a decent overview:

    FANNY HILL (2007)

John Cleland was in debtor’s prison when he wrote Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, (usually shorthanded as Fanny Hill).  The groundbreaking 1748 work of pornography is bawdy but literate, and has been adapted almost as many times as it’s been banned.

King of the sex vixens Russ Meyer directed the first film adaptation. More recent adaptations have tried to do justice to the book’s literary qualities., while preserving the remarkably open minded view of female sexuality that has delighted and titillated readers of both sexes.

Andrew Davies already had Pride and Prejudice and Bridget Jones’ Diary under his belt when adapted this 2007 version for BBC4.  Davies has always had a reputation as a mischievous imp, and Fanny was a perfect vehicle for him to play out the sexuality that bubbled beneath the surface of his more conventional adaptations.

His signature combination of frothiness deft characterization comes through here, as does Fanny’s unquenchable romanticism.  And, of course,  her insatiable appetite for sexual pleasure.  The tale is considerably cleaned up for TV, with a charming young Fanny (Rebecca Knight) and just enough nudity to make you feel like it wasn’t completely bowdlerized.

    BELLE DU JOUR (1967)

Belle du Jour was Louis Bunuel’s first color film and his most successful, a pastiche of sexual twists, reveries and daydreams, all projected onto the tabula rasa of 23-year-old  Catherine Denueve.

Denueve plays a young doctor’s wife, unable to respond to her husband but occupied with rough-trade fantasies.  She finds a way out of her bourgeois prison by spending afternoons in a brothel, where she indulges the kinky and slightly absurd fantasies of her clients. In and out of fantasies, she is raped, whipped and pelted with mud,

Through that secret life she slowly connects to her doctor husband.  And she also finds a young thug who fulfils her fantasies, even though it may or may not end badly.

Salaciousness or lack thereof is beside the point for Bunuel – the sexual proclivities of the Belle and her clients are just another component of the constantly shifting interior/exterior construct that renders conventional morality absurd.  Hidden beneath the comortable veneer is the real world of dreams, irrational and inescapably dangerous.

  THE HARLOT EXPERIENCE was originally published on FollowTheThread