A Blade in the Dark is a movie about making a movie. More specifically, it is a movie about composing music for a movie. Lamberto Bava is a gorgeous maniac and Bava really wants to share this maniacal vision with you. Art and Life are entangled and if you want to untangle this web you do so at your own risk.
Boys will be boys and sometimes its ok to be called a female, say, for instance, when you have to go down a dark flight of stairs to chase a baseball to prove the degree of male-itude you possess and all you hear is your own heart-rate pulsing as you slowly walk down the corridor.
I'd say that's a good time to throw in the cards and consider yourself a girl. Movies about movies can give us a different sort of appreciation for movies and movie-making. We as an audience have so much more we can think about when the movie we are watching is a thriller about making a thriller movie.
The director on-stage can come and tell us exactly what is about to happen and why, including what the genre-specific techniques are, and its justified. I guess this can be a sort of cop-out but if its done well then something about it is attractive. It become a movie that tells us what to expect and why, and then it still creeps the hell out of you.
The plot is simple but the movie is creepy. What we have here is a music-composer who needs to compose some music for an upcoming movie. He isolates himself in a large and creepy house, intentionally reminiscent of the movie which is being shot, and all sorts of fun and weird things start happening to him.
Is it the doing of the director, the character's boss who has approved of his isolated location, or is it the doing of the creepy grounds-keeper? Or is it worse? Or simply more amusing?
Watch this movie and laugh and enjoy it. Lamberto Bava takes you on a wild ride which would have been all the more wild in the 80's yet still holds merit today. One of the death's is the most artistic murder I've ever encountered, I'll let you guess which one.
Monday, March 3, 2008
A Little Bit of Space Can Go A Long Way, So Sayeth Mickey Rourke, and It Was Good
If you've ever thought you were cool and later found out that you weren't, you're probably part of an S. E. Hinton story, like Rumble Fish. If you've ever been fascinated or preoccupied with fish then you can compare yourself to Mickey Rourke. If you've ever been able to solve one of the many riddles of adolescence and (in)humanity with a trip to California then many visits to a pet store, you were probably looking at fighting fish.
This movie is a beautiful little gem. It is black and white except for the cute little fish, fish that kill each other, fish that kill themselves fighting their own reflections. The movie has a solid foundation on one simple idea: if the fish had enough room to live they would not fight.
Teenage angst meets smoking, drinking, sex and Dennis Hopper in this movie. Matt Dillon is the younger brother of the Motorcycle Boy (Mickey Rourke) who is struggling to be as cool as his older brother.
The younger brother is Rusty James. He smokes, sometimes stealing cigarettes from his girl-friend's mother, he drinks, like his father, played by Dennis Hopper, and he has sex with Diane Lane. Crazy kids. Being a teenager can seem tough when you're growing up. Being an adult is even tougher.
The only real difference? Learning to deal with it and mature. If not, you're just an aged teenager, which, sadly I know, doesn't work the same as cheese or wine.
This movie is a beautiful little gem. It is black and white except for the cute little fish, fish that kill each other, fish that kill themselves fighting their own reflections. The movie has a solid foundation on one simple idea: if the fish had enough room to live they would not fight.
Teenage angst meets smoking, drinking, sex and Dennis Hopper in this movie. Matt Dillon is the younger brother of the Motorcycle Boy (Mickey Rourke) who is struggling to be as cool as his older brother.
The younger brother is Rusty James. He smokes, sometimes stealing cigarettes from his girl-friend's mother, he drinks, like his father, played by Dennis Hopper, and he has sex with Diane Lane. Crazy kids. Being a teenager can seem tough when you're growing up. Being an adult is even tougher.
The only real difference? Learning to deal with it and mature. If not, you're just an aged teenager, which, sadly I know, doesn't work the same as cheese or wine.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Limitless Passion and the Human Word for it: Love
Asylum is an excellent and beautiful portrayal of the evil things humans are capable of. It is a love story...of sorts.
It is the love story between the wife who married the asshole doctor, who then meets a patient in the psychiatric ward whom she falls in love with. Then has a torrid affair with. Then leaves her family to be with him when he escapes. Then, then, then...she doesn't even care that he murdered and mutilated his wife and that's how he ended up in the asylum in the first place.
That's what we call unconditional love. The love that would make you leave your family; the love that makes you do dumb things. Love sounds quite terrible.
Ian McKellan is the most evil character you will ever encounter. His fascination with passion knows no boundaries and for the small price of audience's respect he becomes immortalized as an absolute genius.
There is not one single healthy relationship in this entire movie. The marriages which don't included murder, the relationships which don't include spousal abuse, are full of boring bourgeois servitude, paltry dinner talk, and zero understanding of the concept of self-respect.
Passion and love are free to do as they please in this movie. If anyone tells you they love you...be afraid, be very afraid. Watch this movie and smile. This movie is satisfaction.
It is the love story between the wife who married the asshole doctor, who then meets a patient in the psychiatric ward whom she falls in love with. Then has a torrid affair with. Then leaves her family to be with him when he escapes. Then, then, then...she doesn't even care that he murdered and mutilated his wife and that's how he ended up in the asylum in the first place.
That's what we call unconditional love. The love that would make you leave your family; the love that makes you do dumb things. Love sounds quite terrible.
Ian McKellan is the most evil character you will ever encounter. His fascination with passion knows no boundaries and for the small price of audience's respect he becomes immortalized as an absolute genius.
There is not one single healthy relationship in this entire movie. The marriages which don't included murder, the relationships which don't include spousal abuse, are full of boring bourgeois servitude, paltry dinner talk, and zero understanding of the concept of self-respect.
Passion and love are free to do as they please in this movie. If anyone tells you they love you...be afraid, be very afraid. Watch this movie and smile. This movie is satisfaction.
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