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film fatales #189: proof (jocelyn moorhouse, 1991)

This is the fourteenth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2023-24", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 9th annual challenge, and my fifth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", and "2022-23"). Week 14 is called "Living in Obscurity Week":

Top 10 (or 50, or 100, or 250), Best of, and All-Time Greatest lists are all well and good, but sometimes the discerning movie-watcher desires the sweet thrill of discovery, of stumbling upon an obscure gem, of uncovering a magnificent concoction few others have. There is nothing wrong with those lauded collections of films—they are well-known and revered for good reason. But think about this: by some estimates, there are nearly 5 million films out there in the world! It's like a bucket of LEGO containing pieces of every size; all the little bricks sink to the bottom while the bigger ones rest on top. Movies, it seems, are no different.

This week, let's plunge our hands deep into the movie bucket and shun the measly 1% of films (if we're being generous) that get the most attention. However, 4.95 million films are a bit much to sift through. Luckily, Letterboxd makes our task easy: just pick a title from The Most Obscure Movie Recommendations List Ever as compiled by independent online film journal Bright Wall/Dark Room. Voila! Happy discovering!

Proof was the first feature for writer/director Jocelyn Moorhouse, and it was successful on the festival circuit, opening doors for Moorhouse's subsequent career. I've seen her later movie The Dressmaker, which was also highly regarded, although I felt it didn't add up to much. You could say Proof doesn't fit clearly into any genre, or that it crosses several genres, but in any case, it's just different enough to be surprising throughout. It's a study of a blind man, it's a buddy movie, it's a romantic triangle, and no one can every quite trust anyone else. Trust is at the center of the film ... the blind man can't trust what others say because he can't see evidence of what they are talking about. He takes photographs of everything, and then asks people to describe what they see. He compares their descriptions to what people said when the events took place, and can then know who is honest ... the photographs are his proof.

There's some nice acting going on. Hugo Weaving doesn't overplay his character's blindness, and is all the more believable because of that. Russell Crowe is impossibly young (he was 27), with a pleasing charisma. Geneviève Picot rounds out the triangle, and her character is written almost like a femme fatale from a noir picture. Picot makes it work.

Proof won't knock you off your feet, but it's a solid film and a strong start for Moorhouse.

christine (antonio campos, 2016)

This is the thirteenth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2023-24", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 9th annual challenge, and my fifth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", and "2022-23"). Week 13 is called "Breaking News Week":

The organizations of people who have wielded the power to decide what information should be disseminated to the mass public has had profound effects on societies throughout history for both good and evil. How events and people are depicted can influence and shape a whole generation, especially as global means of mass-communication, from the television to the Internet, has extended the news’ reach to more and more people. Even if you don’t watch or read the news yourself, you can’t escape the role it plays in shaping politics and the people in your communities, or in just hearing people discuss the latest headlines around you.

This week we honor, fear, and/or respect the power journalism has had on us by watching a movie about journalism. Here is a list to get you started.

Christine is about a reporter, but it's not really about journalism. Christine the reporter has serious personal problems, which exhibit in her work life and all other aspects of her life. She has opinions about what journalism should be about, and the film shows us life in the news department at a small-market television station, but what director Antonio Campos and writer Craig Shilowich are pushing here is the story of Christine the person, more than just using Christine to examine television news.

Thanks largely to Rebecca Hall's performance in the title role, Christine is an intense and realistic look at the life of someone struggling with life. Hall has had a fascinating career. She was acting on a TV series when she was 10. She began her stage career working with her father, Peter Hall. On film she has worked with everyone from Christopher Nolan to Woody Allen to Ron Howard. In 2021 alone, she starred in Godzilla vs. Kong and made her directorial debut with Passing. She has a unique screen presence, and she fits well in the part of Christine, so well it's almost scary.

[Spoiler alert] There is another important issue I haven't mentioned yet. Christine is bsaed on a true story ... there really was a Christine Chubbuck who worked as a television news reporter in Florida in the early 1970s. If you don't know her story coming to the film ... well, I can't speak to that because I knew how the story ended. And while Campos and Shilowich and Hall are very sympathetic to what Chubbuck was going through, knowing what is coming affects how the film plays. Because Christine Chubbuck was the first person to commit suicide on a live television broadcast. And knowing that, you can't help but think throughout the movie that it's all leading up to that suicide. It's not exactly exploitative, but we want the release that is coming, terrible as it is, like knowing in a movie about the 1906 San Francisco earthquake that the quake is going to be the big scene. But the suicide of a real person is not the same as a depiction of a real earthquake. Christine leaves an unsettling residue that isn't solely because we feel for the tortured life of the main character. It's that we know if Chubbuck hadn't gone out in such a public, even historic way, there would be no movie about her. The suicide becomes the rationale for the film.

white dog (samuel fuller, 1982)

This is the twelfth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2023-24", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 9th annual challenge, and my fifth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", and "2022-23"). Week 12 is called "Career Killers Week":

The flop. The bomb. We know them well. They are legendary. Those films that, whether misguided, ill-advised, cursed, or just plain crap, live on in infamy as cautionary tales. Often, they come after a commercial (and critical) success, when money falls like rain, and sound decision-making takes shelter so as not to get wet. Unfortunately, it only takes one bad feature to poison a career or even put a studio out of business. The big question is: are all career killers deserving of their label?

This week, we'll resurrect (if only for a couple of hours) a career or studio by watching a film from Babalugats' Career Killers list. It's up to you to decide if these films deserve their ignominious place in cinema history.

I'll let the IMDB tell the story, or at least part of it:

The major reason the release of this film was buried by Paramount was due to the criticism by the NAACP, stating the film was trying to push a racist message across in its depictions of the dog's actions while the film was in pre-production. Once a release date was set, the NAACP then threatened Paramount with boycotts, which soon scared off executives largely due to the film's subject matter. The film was then limited to a series of limited screenings throughout 1982 in cities such as Seattle, Denver and Detroit, after which Paramount finally aborted its release in the U.S. and shelved the film soon afterward. Paramount then tried to bury it and denied its existence for over 25 years.

Samuel Fuller had been directing movies for more than 30 years. After White Dog, he moved to France and didn't make any more American films.

The source for the film was an autobiographical novel by Romain Gary that told the true story of he and his wife Jean Seberg adopt a dog, only to gradually learn that it had been trained to attack black people. The film version is slightly different from the novel, but the essence remains: an attack dog that has been trained to be racist. It's more believable than it sounds (and it is based on fact), but unfortunately given the nature of the film, it seems kind of silly. Paul Winfield tries mightily to bring life to a dog trainer intent to removing the racism from the dog, and Fuller is himself quite serious about all of this, but it's not a very good movie. I suspect if it weren't for the controversy, it would be little remembered today. That Fuller became a cult figure for the entire body of his work means everything he did has been reconsidered, and rightly so, although I think he has gone from being underrated to overrated. I'm partial to his Pickup on South Street and Shock Corridor. Bonus points for the cast of White Dog, including Kristy McNichol as the young actress who adopts the dog, and immortal greats like Dick Miller, Paul Bartel, and Parley Baer in cameos.

film fatales #184: the innocents (anne fontaine, 2016)

This is the tenth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2023-24", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 9th annual challenge, and my fifth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", and "2022-23"). Week 10 is called "Nun for You Week":

Nuns have enjoyed a rich history in film, from being featured in classics like Black Narcissus and The Sound of Music, through the Nunsploitation era in the 70s, to today as filmmakers are still fascinated by nuns as characters. Nuns are so compelling and can be featured in a wide-range of genres because they represent a fascinating dichotomy between female-empowerment and male authority. Entering a convent could signify a woman wielding her own power over herself and choosing her own path for a life absent of and free from men with other women, but a convent is still run by a man and the Catholic Church is still a deeply patriarchal system. The suppression of sexual desires is also ripe for the power of romance to overcome, for both dramatic and comedic effect, with or without men. Nunsploitation films offer taboo thrills, but also often critique and question the authority of the Catholic Church. However nuns are depicted in cinema they almost always come from the imagination of someone who is not a nun and could never know what it is really like to be one, which has allowed them to take on a mysterious and almost fantastical role that is also a part of the allure.

This week’s challenge is to watch a movie featuring a nun as a main character. Here’s a list from NunMovieFreak to help you out.

I came to The Innocents spoiler-free. I knew there would be nuns, and that's about it. I'm happy to report that it's a very good film, emotionally wrenching, based on fact, perhaps loosely. It takes place in Poland at the end of 1945. A Red Cross doctor is asked to come to a local convent, where she discovers a very pregnant nun during delivery. To say more is to spoil, but the movie is extremely intense at times, and it doesn't paint a pretty picture. I knew none of the participants ... I'm new to director Anne Fontaine, and to the cast, with Lou de Laâge as the doctor and an excellent cast as the nuns (unfair to single anyone out, but Agata Buzek is a standout). The look of the film is expansive at times, claustrophobic at others (the cinematographer is Caroline Champetier).

Fontaine places women at the center of the story, which is obvious but you never know. Most of the men, with one exception, are brutes ... you're glad there aren't more of them. Fontaine is fair to the faith of the nuns ... the doctor is a non-believer, but everyone gets their perspective presented honestly. The Innocents is a film about faith, but it's also about the importance of sisterhood (no pun intended) and community. It's not an easy film to watch, but it's worth the effort.

body snatchers (abel ferrara, 1993)

This is the ninth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2023-24", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 9th annual challenge, and my fifth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", and "2022-23"). Week 9 is called "Horror Revival Week":

Some of the best horror movies of all time are remakes, like The Thing or The Fly, but in general remakes get a bad rap due to failures like Psycho or Poltergeist. In recent years we've seen different methods of revival with long-awaited reboots/sequels like Halloween, Candyman, and Scream. This week we'll find out if these stories deserve a second life, or if they belong back in the grave.

This week's challenge is to watch a horror remake, reboot, reheat, etc. Use this list for inspiration.

Apparently we need a new Body Snatchers movie every two decades. The first, and still classic, was Invasion of the Body Snatchers, directed by Don Siegel in 1956, a few years after Jack Finney's novel was published. It was something of a Red Scare movie, with the pod people standing in for Commies. Philip Kaufman's 1978 remake fits in with other paranoia films of the 70s, with New Age undertones. I'm not sure where Abel Ferrara's 1993 movie fits into all of this, although the foregrounding of a female character marks a difference, as does the setting (not a small town like the '56 version, or San Francisco in '78, but instead an Army base).

What matters more than anything else is that Ferrara delivers on the horror. The acting is solid, the gore level is expectedly higher than before, and the dystopian attitudes of the earlier films remains. To say that this is the third-best Body Snatchers movie is not to say it's bad. (I haven't seen the 2007 version, with an impressive cast led by Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, which was mostly trashed by critics.) 

infinity pool (brandon cronenberg, 2023)

This is the eighth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2023-24", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 9th annual challenge, and my fifth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", and "2022-23"). Week 8 is called "Body Horror Week":

Prepare to be disgusted. Continuing this month of horror, let’s explore one of the subgenres that can really disturb and elicit a visceral reaction. Body horror features thrills based on the distortion, violation, and/or mutilation of the human body and has the power to make your skin crawl. From the godfather of Body Horror, David Cronenberg, to recent visionaries like his son, Brandon Cronenberg, and Julia Ducournau, there’s no shortage of filmmakers who use this subgenre to explore what it means to be human, to have corporal forms we can’t always control, and to have an identity that is based, at least partially, on how we and others perceive our physical selves.

This week buckle up for a wild ride and maybe don’t plan on eating dinner with your movie as you watch a body horror. Here’s a list from Maxvayne to help you out. The provocative imagery of Body Horror can help us think deeper about ourselves, but since this subgenre can also involve very real physiological reactions we respect anyone who cannot stomach these kinds of movies and offer up Body Swap movies as a lighter alternative with this list.

The list we picked from included lots of movies I really don't care for: Tetsuo: The Iron Man and Tusk come to mind. I do like some of the films, with the 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers at the top, but I realize I don't actually think of that movie as "body horror". The closest blend of "I liked it a lot" and "I'd call it body horror" is Ginger Snaps. My favorite movie by "the godfather of Body Horror, David Cronenberg", was A History of Violence, which wasn't body horror and didn't make the list. It's rare that I enjoy body horror movies, which is a good reason to take part in challenges like this, which expand your horizons.

So I feel like a good boy because I made it through Infinity Pool. But I didn't like it much. I'm not sure I was supposed to "like" it, anyway. Admire it, think about it, sure, but like? There's some intriguing acting, especially from Mia Goth, and the gradual revelation of the plot is well-handled. But the movie never grabbed me, and with an over-the-top film like this, being grabbed seems like the point. So chalk this up to my dislike of the genre.

dr. jekyll & sister hyde (roy ward baker, 1971)

This is the seventh film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2023-24", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 9th annual challenge, and my fifth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", and "2022-23"). Week 7 is called "Hammer Horror Week":

London-based Hammer Film Productions is most famously known for the horror movies they produced in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. They often made low-budget movies featuring classic horror monsters like Frankenstein’s monster, Dracula, and the Mummy, employed a usual repertoire of actors in many of their films (including David Prowse who would later don the Darth Vader costume), crafted Gothic sets, and shot their movies in actual mansions rather than on studio sets. They capitalized on including more explicit violence and sexual content than was usual at the time, but when American films like Rosemary’s Baby and Bonnie and Clyde came out and offered the same thrills with much higher production values, Hammer Pictures couldn’t keep up and eventually ceased producing movies altogether.

This week dive into some classic Hammer Horror from this list. If you can’t unearth one of the classic gems of Hammer Horror you may look to the films made after Hammer Film Productions was resurrected in 2007 after decades of silence.

Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde is a fairly typical late Hammer picture. They make the most of their limited sets, none of the actors are bad, and there's some cleavage. The angle on the classic story this time is that when Jekyll drinks his potion, he doesn't turn into Mr. Hyde, he turns into Mrs. Hyde. The transgender undertones are more obvious nowadays, I imagine. It's the first time I've seen Ralph Bates, who played Jekyll ... he's functional. Former Bond Girl Martine Beswick is better as Mrs. Hyde. The movie works Jack the Ripper and Burke and Hare into the story without too much trouble. Roy Ward Baker has made better films ... he directed the excellent 1958 Titanic movie A Night to Remember, and my favorite Hammer film, Quatermass and the Pit. (He also directed the disappointing Vampire Lovers.)

film fatales #182: messiah of evil (willard huyck & gloria katz, 1973)

This is the sixth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2023-24", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 9th annual challenge, and my fifth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", and "2022-23"). Week 6 is called "Art Horror Week":

Kicking off this year's October horror themes with a different kind of horror. Art house and avant-garde films take an abstract and experimental approach to scares, but they can be just as effective at getting under your skin as traditional horror.

This week's challenge is to watch an avant-garde or art-horror film. Use this list for inspiration.

A husband-and-wife team produced, wrote, and directed this for under a million dollars. They had just finished a treatment for a film with fellow SoCal film-school grad George Lucas, and went on to make their own movie. They later returned to work on Lucas' film, which was American Graffiti. They worked on many subsequent films, including the notorious Howard the Duck. Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz had their hands in a lot of George Lucas films, and are ultimately best known for that at-times uncredited work. Messiah of Evil, like so many early films out of film schools in the late-60s/early-70s, makes a virtue of its cheapness, overflows with student-film flourishes, and makes the most of what in the end isn't all that great.

Those arty flourishes are the best thing about the movie. It has a unique look ... the main home where much of the movie takes place is filled with art works that lend an almost Caligari feel. But Messiah of Evil isn't very scary ... foreboding might be a better word. The film making is accomplished. I want to say more positive things, but the movie didn't do it for me.

The cast is interesting. The four leads are cult figures to varying degrees: Michael Greer, Marianna Hill (Fredo's wife in Godfather II), Joy Bang, and Anitra Ford from the immortal Invasion of the Bee Girls. Old Hollywood is represented by Royal Dano and Elisha Cook Jr. (Cook apparently filmed his entire part in one day). In the time-honored tradition of cutting costs by using friends, future writer/director Walter Hill is the first person we see, as a soon-to-be victim, and Huyck and Katz themselves have cameos as zombies.

white noise (noah baumbach, 2022)

This is the fifth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2023-24", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 9th annual challenge, and my fifth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", and "2022-23"). Week 5 is called "Visual Insanity Week":

Film is a visual medium, and this week celebrates the artists who take full advantage of the screen. Letterboxd user Emma Tolkin asked people what the most visually insane movie they've ever seen was, and compiled the hallucinogenic, meditative, harrowing, dreamy, and chaotic results into one list.

This week's challenge is to watch a film from Emma Tolkin's 🐉🎭✨ 𝕍𝕀𝕊𝕌𝔸𝕃𝕃𝕐 𝙸𝙽𝚂𝙰𝙽𝙴👹🧞‍♀️👁️ list.

I'm not sure I would have noticed at first that the visuals in White Noise were what Emma Tolkin refers to as "insane". They are idiosyncratic, a fascinating blend of realism and the subjective as experienced by the characters, and even that realism tends to be heightened. In retrospect, I have to hand it to Tolkin and the people who responded to her poll, because if I might not use the word "insane", the visuals in this movie do move from meditative to harrowing to dreamy to chaotic, smoothly at times, messily when that is appropriate.

I would call White Noise a good try by writer/director Noah Baumbach to capture what has been called an unfilmable novel. I don't know exactly what Baumbach could have done differently. I have no idea what Don DeLillo thinks of this movie adaptation of his book ... perhaps it primarily matters how much DeLillo got paid ... I'm not sure it matters what DeLillo thinks, any more than it matters what any novelist thinks of the movies that grow out of their books. White Noise stands on its own. You could watch it without knowing the book and you wouldn't get lost. I've read the book, and I don't think Baumbach does any harm. But all of this skirts the only thing that matters: is White Noise a good movie? To which I would say, it's a good try.

It's nice to see Greta Gerwig in front of the cameras again. I am a fan of her work as a director, but her quirky presence on the screen is fun to watch. Adam Driver seems miscast, but that may actually be perfect casting, since his character is often unsettled. The Gladney family is believable without the kids being obnoxious. Don Cheadle is his usual good self as a professor who wants to work in Elvis Studies. The latter matters ... Driver's Professor Gladney made a name for himself in academia for "Hitler Studies", and White Noise reflects its origins in DeLillo's book in casting a humored but jaundiced eye at academia.

Yet in the end (and I'm not saying anything about the literal end, which is a blast and you should see it for yourself), I didn't really care about White Noise. It exists, it doesn't replace the novel but it's a reasonable facsimile, there's nothing particularly wrong with it, but I'd call it disappointing if I had any actual hopes for the film. I prefer Baumbach to Wes Anderson, to whom Baumbach was often attached earlier in his career, and I think his pairing with Gerwig has been fruitful. But I don't think White Noise is Baumbach's best film as a director (that would be Marriage Story), and I don't think it's up to the standards Gerwig herself has set in her work as a director.

secrets & lies (mike leigh, 1996)

This is the fourth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2023-24", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 9th annual challenge, and my fifth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", and "2022-23"). Week 4 is called "Palme d'Or Week":

One of the three major film festival top prizes (the other two being the Golden Lion at Venice and the Golden Bear at Berlin, both covered in previous LSCs), the Palme d'Or has been awarded at the Cannes Film Festival since 1946. Originally called the Grand Prize of the International Film Festival, it was changed to a palm in 1955 to represent the city's coat of arms. It's one of the most prestigious awards in cinema, with past winners including Martin Scorsese, Federico Fellini, and Akira Kurosawa.

This week's challenge is to watch a Palme d'Or winner.

Secrets & Lies was nominated for 5 Oscars, major ones (Picture, Actress, Supporting Actress, Director, Screenplay), but 1996 was the year of The English Patient, a mediocre, overrated film that somehow won 9 Oscars. At least Cannes got it right. Secrets & Lies is a masterful picture about people, warts and all, stepping gingerly through family life. No one is perfect, but we feel close to all of them, and we want everything to somehow come out all right.

Oddly, the acting is both showy and realistic. Brenda Blethyn is all over the place in a sloppy sort of way ... of course she won awards for her work here. But the acting matches the character, a middle-aged woman with an "illegitimate" daughter who worries that life has passed her by while she keeps secrets (and lies about them). Blethyn also turns inward on a couple of occasions, which contrast with her general blowsiness in powerful ways. It's an actorly performance, but enormously moving.

It's probably a good thing the acting is so good, because the basic story is just that, basic. And there is nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong with a story about families, secrets, and lies. But while the narrative seems a bit formulaic in retrospect, that doesn't matter as you watch the actors at work. Marianne Jean-Baptiste's character is the most internal ... she isn't given as many explosive scenes. But neither is the character entirely reactive to others, and as could be said for so many of the film's characters, the acting elevates the character as "written" (Mike Leigh famously doesn't exactly write his films).

Secrets & Lies is my fifth Mike Leigh movie, and while I've liked them all, I'd put Secrets & Lies at the top. #494 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They list of the top 1000 films of all time.