A Cure For Wellness (2016)

Sometimes you can watch a film that has received mixed responses and be completely in understanding of why someone might not enjoy it yet fall absolutely in love with what it delivers. After all, that is the beauty of cinema and any other art form. It’s purely subjective and what one may find terrible, another will adore. If anything, that’s why I’ve always loved cinema, more than even music or literature. 

Anyway, moving on to Verbinski’s film. Please don’t think I’m labelling this as a masterpiece, but I consider A Cure For Wellness to be a fascinating film in so many ways. I love the way it has a thematic relationship with the work of HP Lovecraft, how it absorbs the illness of the mind through something like Scorsese’s Shutter Island and how it engulfs all ideas into a film which bears familiarity with Guillermo del Toro through its adoration of Old Hollywood. 

People will consider its reliance upon atmosphere, mood, style to directly impact its inner workings, but I don’t necessarily regard Verbinski’s film as hollow or silent in what its saying. Instead, it chooses atmosphere as its primary voice and the way A Cure For Wellness paints so many beautiful images upon its serene landscape setting makes its impact hit me just that bit harder. 

Running back to my point about this being an obvious HP Lovecraft riff, Dane DeHaan makes for an excellent representation of illness, insanity and trauma. You can even throw a comparison between DeHaan and Sam Neill from Carpenter’s In The Mouth of Madness which is an equally unsettling Lovecraftian work, but I’ll save that for my next viewing.

84/100

I May Destroy You (TV, 2020)

Chewing Gum, to put it simply, isn’t much more than a sex comedy, but it’s still a really entertaining show and shows Michaela Coel as one of the most promising young voices in British television. Thinking about in comparison to I May Destroy You, it can seem a little surprising as to how Coel has evolved so quickly, but in other ways it’s pretty straightforward. I’d even classify it as the more light-hearted precursor to I May Destroy You due to how it follows Coel’s character through an exploration into sex, drugs and finding a career. 

With I May Destroy You, we see Coel’s Arabella in a more secure place. She’s a novelist, she’s got a name for herself and she’s got friends all around her. That’s the growth, but the aforementioned themes of sex and drugs play a more pivotal, disturbing role here. After all, this is a deeply disturbing work that does have an unbelievable amount of wit, charm and comedy, but these are like the scorpion under the rock with the rock being, but not limited to: perceptions of assault, consequences of rape, childhood trauma, sexuality, race, loneliness. Coel tackles everything with such a rawness, but it all feels so layered and authentic that I felt anxious and terrified in near enough each episode.

The way Coel crafts this not just as a disturbing image of trauma and its consequences is truly stunning and made all the more fascinating by how it’s structured. The use of flashbacks, whether they be an entire episode or just a flittering moment inside present day, allows the show to explore all these themes to complete precision whereby you never feel like Coel is just filling space or being lazy and giving us all the answers. Everything serves a purpose to not only document Arabella’s pain of being raped, but works on a grander scale as it observes the impact of sexual assault and the misconceptions of how so many factors in society have on her friends Terry and Kwame.

As soon as this ended, I just sat back in awe. It’s honestly one of the greatest pieces of television I’ve not only seen in recent years, but probably ever. Coel’s show is utterly profound, mesmeric and more terrifying than most horror films because it feels so real. To watch this and think about how easy it is for a woman to be raped or at least find herself in a situation to be at risk of it is just truly upsetting.

100/100

The Nightingale (2018)

While The Babadook was a terrifying experience in itself owed to the way Jennifer Kent utilised parental fear as the focus of its horror, The Nightingale goes further down the rabbit hole despite its lack of instant identification with the horror genre. This, in fact is more terrifying that anything we see in The Babadook’s obsession with a physical incarnation of a monster due to how authentic the events here feel.

Kent’s film is placed in 1825 and battles with so many dark, bleak themes of racism, slavery and the evil of man showcased through its gruelling images of rape against women. Within the first hour, I’d lost count of how many sequences of rape I’d covered my eyes through, but that’s the effectiveness of Kent’s drama more than anything. She’s painting this image of hell and none of the pain is filtered, the suffering obstructed or the themes explored without an explosive intensity attached towards them. After all, that is needed and no matter how difficult this film is to witness, Kent’s film is here to portray the heinous acts of mankind.

The Nightingale isn’t only fascinated by manifested and constructing itself as a feminist work of one woman’s battles against these aforementioned crimes, but goes down another avenue as it explores the connection of two unlikely sources coming together to find their own salvation through the struggles and trauma they’ve endured. Aisling Franciosi and Baykali Ganambarr, both newcomers, play these tortured souls brilliantly and you can feel their pain in each moment. 

The nightmare sequences will not leave me for a very long time.

93/100

The Forest of Love: Deep Cut (2020)

It’s hard for me to think of a director who succeeds because of excess more than Sion Sono and while I think it’s unlikely he’ll ever top Love Exposure, it’s fascinating to discuss The Forest Of Love and how format presentation works in someone’s favour or against them. Sono’s latest has been released as this “Deep Cut” consisting of 7 episodes over 5 hours and a more accessible feature cut of 150 minutes, but it explores so much and goes down so many different avenues of hellish depravity that there’s surely no way the feature cut could contain this much precision. It’s easy to see why it’s been released in two different ways, but the pacing of Sono’s cinema is what makes it. He takes time to build atmosphere, suspense, pain, fear and attitude and it doesn’t truly leap into insanity until the midway point. To witness this in a shorter cut would be to minimise the anxiety Sono is so concerned with crafting. 

Anyway, onto the film. What I love so much about Sono’s cinema is not just the excess, but how everything feels so engaging and entrancing. Whether that be through the film’s disturbing violence, the dreamlike girl’s school visuals, the constant bouncing between 1985-1993-1995, Kippei Shiina’s manipulative performance or the Murata film production, Sono just makes cinema that is absolutely fascinating in the strangest ways with an energy and style that cannot be contained. 

If i’m being greedy, I could even argue Sono could’ve made it go on for longer. A dirty, entertaining, creative and terrifying work of a filmmaker who has no taboo’s or boundaries he cannot touch. Extraordinary.

100/100

Manhunter (1986)

There isn’t a filmmaker better at crafting that midnight mood than Michael Mann and this is perhaps my favourite piece of evidence of the director’s recognisable style. While you can argue Heat or Thief is the more iconic demonstration of this, there’s something about the way Manhunter’s psychological descent into murder, crime, obsession and passion give it an even eerier sense of nighttime than his other works.

The way this film elicits images of sunsets and sunrises through blue, red, purple hues only further replicates the animalistic side to Mann’s work. Coupled with some truly entrancing sequences such as when Dollarhyde takes the blind reba to stroke a sedated tiger or the way he casually watches home video footage of his next family while she sits next to him is just… chilling. In a way, Mann’s film doesn’t feel like a thriller as much as it does horror because of these jarring and terrifying ideas is so concerned with playing with.

While the subsequent release of The Silence of the Lambs has overshadowed Mann’s work, there’s something deep within this beast that I can barely contain my admiration for besides Jonathan Demme’s masterpiece. It’s a disturbing work, but the overwhelming theme of obsession alongside the unavoidable concept of sacrifice help to give Mann’s film something of a beauty about it. Each frame, while terrifying, could very easily be framed on a wall. Mann is truly a master of his craft and a filmmaker I will always have love for.

90/100

The Painted Bird (2019)

I’ve been trying to watch this for a few days, but I’ve been too tired to put it on at night and it’s not exactly the sort of film I want to watch in the middle of the day so tonight I poured a strong coffee to keep me awake and finally hit play. In truth though, there’s no way you can fall asleep through something like this. A film drenched in pain, suffering, death and misery is unsurprisingly easy to stay awake through regardless of your energy levels. 

Within the first minute, you see a ferret set on a fire. That was enough evidence to me that this was going to be the violent work of nihilism I anticipated. Over the course of 170 minutes, Vaclav Marhoul’s The Painted Bird just grows all the more disturbing and unrelenting as our young protagonist Joska’s descent continues, but nothing here exists to solely shock despite how visually explosive it is.

The Painted Bird utilises violence in clear comparison to Klimov’s Come and See or Schlondorff’s The Tin Drum in that it’s there as an unholy introduction to the misery, suffering and harshness of life and all the trauma that comes throughout life. While those two comparisons have a more strict narrative presentation, The Painted Bird comes across initially as episodic due to its title cards and the ever-changing setting, but it soon settles itself and those moments of agony begin to feel more prolonged and ultimately damaging. 

Much in the same way to those two comparisons or even to Babenco’s Pixote, each interaction is necessary and Joska’s participation serves as a reminder of the hell he’s in. No matter who he goes to or if he begins to think there’s something better, there never will be. Everything is pain and Marhoul’s film never toys with the concept of positivity or hope. 

Certain images such as Joska’s head being pecked by crows while he’s buried will not escape my mind for a long time. Bleak.

100/100

Ran (1985)

I’ve been slightly hesitant to watch this one due to my mixed reactions to the works of Akira Kurosawa. I watched Ikirualmost a decade ago, which was one of my first ever foreign language viewings as I was just getting big into cinema, and it’s coldness has stuck in my mind ever since making it as unforgettable masterpiece. Subsequent viewings of Rashomon, Throne of Blood and Yojimbo didn’t go as planned as I was left somewhat indifferent to each of them in their own ways.

Today, I felt the need to jump back on the Kurosawa train and give his Japanese epics one last shot in the hope I’d be a fan of this legendary filmmaker. In reality, I shouldn’t have been so hesitant, because I knew from the very first moments this was something I’d love. Kurosawa’s deconstruction of the Shakespeare tragedy King Lear is magnificent for so many reasons, but none of them are connected at all to my expectations.

Sure, there’s some reason behind this as I’m not exactly familiar with King Lear, but Kurosawa’s epic feels like so much more than the war epic I had envisioned. In fact, I feel like its emphasis is firmly at the feet of family betrayal and throughout its 160 minutes I never had the feeling it was gonna transform into a film which uses lengthy battle sequences as its main attraction, which is what I anticipated. While the films most memorable battle sequence is stunning, its only one of two sequences Kurosawa incorporates here. He is instead infatuated with more fascinating concepts of the aforementioned family betrayal and how rivalries and relationships begin to change when power comes into the equation.

It’s a relatively simply concept and Kurosawa’s film never feels too complex in that regard, but it always feels exhaustive in other ways because of how deep the director goes into his analysis of rivalry and betrayal. It’s just extraordinary to witness the scope of everything here and I’m a real sucker for red being used as a primary colour in films, but the way the blu-ray restoration of this classic makes the streams of blood and the red flags feel brighter only further increases my love for this astonishing work that I have no qualms in declaring a masterpiece on one singular viewing.

I can’t wait to dive further into Kurosawa’s catalogue and revisit the works I was indifferent to because this is a filmmaker whose talents demand to be appreciated at the very least on a technical level. Each frame is remarkable and would look perfect hung on any wall.

100/100

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Witnessing Fury Road on an initial viewing back in 2015 was a very satisfying feeling, but its sheer energy and style feels more prominent to me on this overdue second viewing. Much of that is owed to my relatively subdued reaction to the entirety of the original trilogy as I never truly felt engaged by the narrative, nor submerged deep in the action of its post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Fury Road is something else. It’s a magnificent beast of an action movie, one with goes for broke with a bare-bones narrative and dives deep into constructing one of the most ferocious action movies ever made. Miller’s concepts explored in the original trilogy were interesting in thought, but my intrigue never extended much past that. With Fury Road, he’s managed to create the world I feel like he’s always wanted to.

It’s a world full of dirt, pain and the most indescribable ugliness. Fury Road feels less an extension of the original trilogy, but rather a reconstruction in both attitude and brutality. It’s absolutely fascinating to think further into its growth from the Mel Gibson films and how they felt big in their own way, but never truly felt this insane and enormous in both energy and power.

The action sequences take up the majority of the film, but never do they feel like time filler to put a seal around an absence of narrative. They’re the main attraction here. Miller knows this and he wants us to be engulfed within it. The action is gritty, aggressive and absolutely punishing in every occasion. It uses its limited breathing time in between fight scenes to settle things down, but it never lasts for long and you can just feel Miller’s itching to get back on the saddle and feel the bloodshed once more.

If anything, that’s what I love about Fury Road most. It’s a film which has its creator displaying passion, energy and commitment to make the most adrenaline fuelled animal of a movie he can possibly make. It’s not without its own intelligence, though, and I absolutely loved the way it switches beautifully between the golden haze of dawn into the dim blues of dusk in a way which feels oddly unsettling.

It’ll be a crying shame if this isn’t the start of a new trilogy as I’d love to see more of Charlize Theron’s Furiosa and Tom Hardy’s reinterpretation of Max Rockatansky down the road, but judging by Miller’s disputes with Warner Bros it doesn’t look likely so we may have to settle for this one juggernaut of a modern Hollywood blockbuster.

86/100

Sorry to Bother You (2018)

It’s fascinating to observe a film such as Sorry to Bother You, which is something that not only feels relevant today but will surely remain relevant for decades to come. That’s owed to how it portrays civilisation in the darkest way possible – capitalism taking over humans, getting greedy and trading them through slave labour and making them into products rather than beings.

That’s what gives Boots Riley’s film its edge and in many ways you could easily classify this as not only a satire, but something with strained horror elements beneath the surface in how it maximises concepts of imprisonment and suffering, but stuffs them deep down in science fiction territory in a film which masquerades as a relatively straight forward drama with comedic elements.

To belittle it or place it in one genre is a severe injustice to Riley’s film because this is a film which says so much about so many things and never feels like it’s surface level to any of them. It dives deep into every observation of society it faces and is all the better for it, but race is the more prominent factor here which drives the narrative in the dark realms of civilisation deconstructing one step at a time.

Lakeith Stanfield, as the aptly named Cassius “CASH” Green, plays our black telemarketer, who quickly realises he ain’t getting anywhere in his role if he doesn’t put on his “white voice”. Riley’s film is deeply concerned by these issues of race, the place of the black man in society and so many other fascinating ideas of how to get anywhere in life he has to submit to WorryFree’s white CEO and ignore his moral views for his life to transform into something of positivity. That’s powerful and the film feels like a remarkable representation of the issues faced in society and civilisation as a whole and something that needs to change, but never feels like it will as it should.

Without going too much into the narrative, because I feel like this is a film which succeeds best when going in blind, but this reminded me of a lot of films I deeply love. Firstly, I love the way it uses the aforementioned concepts of race as in Get Out, the way it echoes the wacky atmosphere of the office sequences in Being John Malkovich, but the major comparison I found was to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

In that film, Michael Gondry (or Michael Dongry if you take the clear nod in the WorryFree commercial video) explores the cleansing of memory for anyone who wants to erase a relationship permanently, but Riley subverts this concept and explores a similar cleansing via brainwashing society into believing WorryFree is anything more than slave labour represented as a financially secure idea for families to enjoy. In a way, that’s a cleansing of civilisation and removes their instinctive ideas of life and their memories, just as Gondry explored.

I would love to view this again in the near future to see if there’s any other ideas at play I perhaps missed, but for the moment I found Sorry to Bother You to be a very compelling work that has so much imagination, style and drive to it that’s it’s near impossible not to appreciate if even if you feel at a distance from the themes explored.

84/100

Autumn Sonata (1978)

I’d say this shows the deterioration of a relationship between mother and daughter, but it’s really a careful analysis of a relationship that never existed in the first place. Bergman’s careful study of the tortures and tribulations between mother and daughter is raw, unrelenting and so unbelievably pure.

Its two leads Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullman go through the wringer emotionally as all the pain comes seeping out in one of the most uncomfortable conversations ever seen in cinema. The harshness and brutality of these emotions was at times too much for me, but I felt hooked and absorbed with every line of its powerful dialogue that encapsulates all the human emotions Bergman is so obsessed by.

As it progresses and the pain only grows, it becomes even further apparent there will be no easy solution to the woes of these two wounded souls. Bergman is not interested in the resolution of the two, but rather haunted by the state of the human soul and how we simply need to express our feelings and let others understand the pain we’re experiencing because of them.

100/100