What classics did you see last week ? (9 Dec - 15 Dec 2018)

Hi all,I hope everyone had a good weekend,and I watched:

Auteurs of 2006 trio:



Friedkin's Bug 10

“I am a super mother bug!”

Descending in a long opening crane shot down to Agnes White’s motel room in the first of his two collaborations with writer Tracy Letts, directing auteur William Friedkin & cinematographer Michael Grady limit gazes outdoors to a handful of crane shots over the motel, displaying the isolated wilderness the location is surrounded by. Dicing his recurring motifs of visceral Neo-Noir styling with the abrasiveness of Horror, Friedkin and Grady superbly spray a Horror Noir atmosphere, with Friedkin going for the Redneck vein in a documentary-style of sawn-off whip-pans and shaking fluid close-ups looking into the eyes of madness which bite at White and Evans increasingly paranoid loneliness.

Tugging at the wings of horror by painting Evans entrance to White’s room in grubby over saturated yellow,Friedkin fires up the screen with a gradual dip into a blue neon burn, which along with slicing open a claustrophobic mood, also plays as a canvas for Friedkin to bite into sharp shocks of blunt-force horrors. Working with Friedkin for the first time, writer Tracy Letts brilliant sets out the Redneck world that would be explored here and in Killer Joe, as deep-fried murky mysteries to their pasts crawl out of White and Evans skins.

Largely kept to just two people in a small room, (with the occasional unwanted guest to spice things up) Letts unveils his playwriting skills by keeping the dialogue fresh in a limited set-up, thanks to the dialogue tugging at the ambiguity of Evans (who like Killer Joe, is a complete loner) paranoia, and White becoming inflamed by the doubts from Evans nibbling at her own fragile state. Spending the whole film round each other, Michael Shannon and Ashley Judd give outstanding performances as Evans and White, thanks to Shannon having Evans roll in with Southern charm which gets cut up into cracking under fear pressure,whilst Judd grinds down on the shell around her, as White is unable to shake off the feeling of something bugging at her.



Takashi Miike's Big Bang Love, Juvenile A 9

“From one light-year away you can see the earth one year ago.”

Snapping the film open with the Clap Board clapping and the lone on-screen actor appearing to be reading from the script, directing auteur Takashi Miike & debuting cinematographer Masato Kaneko (who also did Sun Scarred in the same year with Miike) tear the 4th wall down with a major subtle theme which covers Miike’s credits of there being no safety barrier between the viewer and the film. Painting the prison cells starkly with shadows for the bars and abrasive primary coloured blocks for the walls, Miike offers no easy answers to the audience on the murder, as prisoners speak directly to the viewer in first-person sequences, and the questions (silently asked) pop-up on screen.

Toning down his distinctive over the top gore motif,(but keeping sexual violence intact, here examined in a thoughtful, psychological manner) Miike and Kaneko explore the prison grounds with bubbling surrealist stylisation. Set in a near-future, Miike paints the sky with dazzling Sci-Fi colours, (with even a rocket launch being included) and fills the corners of the cells with fading ghosts and tribal tattoos of prisoners standing out against the coloured walls, which superbly creates a yin/yang atmosphere, via the religious meditation on the universe reflecting on the windows of the raw minimalism in the prison. Sparingly using Kôji Endô’s score, Miike displays a sharp ear for the use of silence, with the lone thump of fist punchings and ropes snapping on a silent backdrop tuning into an incredibly raw chill. Nodding to Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950) (despite knowing the outline,I’ve still not seen it!) in the adaptation of Ikki Kajiwara and Hisao Maki’s novel Shonen A ereji, Miike’s regular collaborator Masa Nakamura intelligently expresses the themes of the film in the stripped-down dialogue between the delicate, and yearning for love Ariyoshi, with the primal screams of pain from Kazuki. Criss-crossing the perspectives on the killing, Nakamura enticingly keeps the definitive version of events clouded in Juvenile A.



Chabrol's Comedy of Power 6

“You know what the courts call her?: The Piranha.”

For the seventh and final time she worked with Claude Chabrol, Isabelle Huppert gives an excellent performance as Charmant-Killman. Determined to peel all layers of corruption away, Huppert avoids having Killman deliver justice in a melodramatic style, by instead scratching away with a refined, forensic manner, which captures the professional stride Killman holds herself to. Reuniting with Chabrol straight after this for The Girl Cut in Two (2007)François Berléand gives a very good turn as Humeau,with Huppert’s performance being complimented by Berléand’s attempt to escape Killman’s gaze with slippery underhanded skills.

Cheekily stating in the credits that the film is not based on the “ Affaire Elf” scandal, co-writer/(with Odile Barski) directing auteur Claude Chabrol and cinematographer Eduardo Serra unveil the corruption in stylish dissolves over Killman’s power-play marriage troubles being contrasted with the power she has in the investigation. A family affair with his sons Matthieu doing the score, and Thomas co-starring,along with wife Aurore being the script supervisor, the screenplay by Chabrol & Barski uses the "Elf affair" to continue Chabrol’s clinical dissection of the bourgeoisie with the businessmen and politicians having an um-settling calm and self-confidence that they can slip out of any attempt to bring them down. Going for more of a Drama rather than a Thriller, Chabrol gives Killman fight against the corporate system an oddly casual atmosphere, via little room being given to Killman’s net widening in taking on the comedy of power.

Other movies:



Rote Sonne (1970) 7

Holding back from the free-wheeling shoot-outs which made the Italian Crime genre so lively, (with a clever use of muffled sound effects for newspaper being used as a silencer) director Rudolf Thome & cinematographer Bernd Fiedler take aim with a off-beat, casual hippie atmosphere, with the ladies sorting out the next supply not in a seedy den, but a "happening" house. Swinging very much to the sounds of the 60's,Thome keeps the flick refreshingly playful by breaking the Crime tunes with splashes of kitsch "free love" and from out of left-field brightly coloured partying. Keeping to the beat of Thome's style, the screenplay by Max Zihlmann wraps Thomas (played by a fittingly meek Marquard Bohm) and his relationships with the sexy women in a peculiar hazy mood, which subtly works as the women reveal to Thomas why they all stay somewhat disconnected in their romantic encounters, as they load up when the red sun sets.



Ocean's 8 (2018) 6

Continuing a collaboration with Steven Soderbergh which started when Soderbergh produced his directing debut Pleasantville (1998), co-writer/(with Olivia Milch) director Gary Ross & cinematographer Eigil Bryld keep the flow of the 2001 Ocean's smoothly continuing with sleek panning shots along the floors following the long con, and Pop-Art editing shaking up a bubbly atmosphere. Laying out the cards in the first half, Ross takes some of the shine off the franchise with a surprisingly blatant amount of product placements,which hurts all the set-up in the due to scenes being left needlessly hanging by the focus being not put on the characters, but flogging products. Merrily going full circle with the opening, the screenplay by Ross and Olivia Milch attempts to introduce each gang member with a thumb sketch, but leaves them all smudged by not offering sequences where a spark develops between them all. Massively helped by the glamour from the cast, the film rolls some winning numbers in the extended robbery where the charisma and sign of friendship between each member of the group is at last allowed to sparkle as Debbie Ocean rolls a hard eight.