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Basebf555 posted:I voted for Re-Animator and Ms. 45 because I'm 99% sure that's the way I want to vote and I'm scared of forgetting like I did last week. It's pretty easy to break up Salo into three separate viewings if you'd like. It has clear demarcations between Chapters. Circle of Mania, Circle of poo poo, Circle of Blood. I recommend, if you can, watch it all in one sitting. There are other movies that we've watched already in this tournament that I think are harder to watch. I personally got a little queasy in Part 2, Circle of poo poo, so that, in my opinion, is the worst part. That one's gonna be a hard one for me. I love Ms. 45, and I do think it's fun and subversive after it's shocking opening sequences. I think Salo is more than just shocking. It's thoughtful, it's fascinating, and we don't get many movies like it. I pretty much disagree entirely with Shrecknet's reading of the film, and I think it's tale a world that is corrupted, degraded and destroyed by a minority of insane affluent monsters still resonates hardcore in today's climate. I watched it while Epstein was arrested and murdered, and so having things like the Lolita Express on my mind while watching similar events unfold in a (safe, fictional) story was incredibly troubling. I also watched Ms. 45 at the height of the #MeToo movement, and with Promising Young Woman currently making people consider Rape Revenge films and the role they play in culture in a new light, it's a little hard to downplay it's position as one of the best--and probably the most fun, if that's not too weird a compliment--examples of the genre. Here's what'll probably determine my vote: if/when Ms. 45 gets a 4k UHD, I'm pre-ordering that movie Day One. Whereas I don't have any want to own Salo. It's not a movie I'd loan to anyone, it's not a movie I'm going to throw on for funsies. I do think the Criterion blu ray cover is amazing, though.
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Feb 15, 2021 16:45
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Torn between Ms .45 and Salo. I admire both movies greatly, part of me says Salo is the better film, but then I feel like I want to see more from the NYC grime team than I do from the Bon Appetit team.
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Feb 15, 2021 16:48
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Deb's stream is really the only way I'm gonna see Salo this week so I'm gonna try my best to be there and stick with it to the end. I wouldn't tap out due to the content or anything it's just tough sometimes on weeknights to stay up and engaged that late in the evening depending on how tired I am.
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Feb 15, 2021 16:49
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Basebf555 posted:Deb's stream is really the only way I'm gonna see Salo this week so I'm gonna try my best to be there and stick with it to the end. I wouldn't tap out due to the content or anything it's just tough sometimes on weeknights to stay up and engaged that late in the evening depending on how tired I am. If you can't make it, I'm sure Deb or someone can help you with borrowing a copy. Just hop into the discord and ask. I'm also most definitely voting for Re-animator, cuz it's loving Re-animator. But I like Lucky McKee as an artist and as a person, and I actually heard a little bit about the production of The Woods in Don Coscarelli's memoir True Indie*, and it made me interested in checking it out. *Coscarelli was doing a grassroots distribution for Bubba Ho-Tep with screenings with Q&As, meet-n-greets, etc. Bruce Campbell did most of them, but couldn't make it to one of the most important showings because he was filming The Woods with Lucky McKee.
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Feb 15, 2021 16:57
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I will say I scoffed at Deb calling Ms 45 "fun" but I watched it last night and it really was actually kind of fun. It was something else entirely from what I had built it up in my mind. I don't imagine I'll say the same for Salo though. I'm gonna try to watch it tonight with the stream but for as much as people say its important and thoughful I'm not sure I'll be able to see or appreciate that. We'll see.
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Feb 15, 2021 18:38
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The only thing Abel Ferrara has ever done that might rival the grossness of Salo is that pizza from The Driller Killler.
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Feb 15, 2021 18:43
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Basebf555 posted:The only thing Abel Ferrara has ever done that might rival the grossness of Salo is that pizza from The Driller Killler. Will take my chances with the poo poo, tyvm
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Feb 15, 2021 18:49
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STAC Goat posted:I will say I scoffed at Deb calling Ms 45 "fun" but I watched it last night and it really was actually kind of fun. It was something else entirely from what I had built it up in my mind. Do you know anything about Marquis de Sade, his ideas and approach to literature, and the context of his writing the novel and it's publication? Salo's not really a movie you can spoil, cuz the description of the movie is the plot, and I thinking knowing some of that stuff before watching how Pasolini approached filming it and using it as a critique on Fascism and Class Disparity might give you an added appreciation for why it's "important". A fun fact I have yet to look further into is apparently The 120 Days of Sodom isn't even his most vulgar book. His novels "Justine" and "Juliette", I'm told, are way more disturbing. Franchescanado fucked around with this message at 19:00 on Feb 15, 2021 |
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Feb 15, 2021 18:58
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Franchescanado posted:Do you know anything about Marquis de Sade, his ideas and approach to literature, and the context of his writing the novel and it's publication? Salo's not really a movie you can spoil, cuz the description of the movie is the plot, and I thinking knowing some of that stuff before watching how Pasolini approached filming it and using it as a critique on Fascism and Class Disparity might give you an added appreciation for why it's "important". Yeah, I think I'm familiar enough with the themes. I know the basic idea of Marquis de Sade and have seen many version of his story, and I'm familiar with the Sodom reference and its Biblical origins. I have a vague sense of what Salo is going to say based on those things. But I think I find this kind of thing overly "performative." If the film can't be spoiled and its themes are ones present in lots of work then what purpose does its extreme imagery serve except to draw attention to itself? Is it getting across these ideas better as a result or is it just burying them other something else more visceral that much of its audience focuses on and enjoys? Obviously I can't fairly answer that question without seeing it. Which... sigh... I guess I will try and do.
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Feb 15, 2021 19:06
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I watched The Woods and it's perfectly competent but never develops the characters enough to really get you invested, and draws from much stronger films to wind up with a watered down version of them. It's not a bad movie, it's just not very good, and it will lose in a landslide to Re-Animator - rightly so. That said, I looked up the director of The Woods and realized that May has been in my watch pile for some time, and since it likely won't come up in this tournament, I watched that as well. Now that is a great movie! I still think Lucky McKee was screwed either way being up against Re-Animator but if May was the draw it might actually be a fight, I can see why May would be the pick of some voters in that case.
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Feb 15, 2021 19:22
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May vs Reanimator would be an actual decision for me. I like Reanimator a lot but I think From Beyond is the Gordon film that beats or stands toe to toe with all competition
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Feb 15, 2021 19:36
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"Spoilers" for Salò: 120 Days of Sodom follow, so come back after you watch it if you want something to read. I grabbed these moreso as an introduction to the film, things to think about while you watch, but some of the context may be confusing without seeing the film first.STAC Goat posted:Yeah, I think I'm familiar enough with the themes. I know the basic idea of Marquis de Sade and have seen many version of his story, and I'm familiar with the Sodom reference and its Biblical origins. I have a vague sense of what Salo is going to say based on those things. But I think I find this kind of thing overly "performative." If the film can't be spoiled and its themes are ones present in lots of work then what purpose does its extreme imagery serve except to draw attention to itself? Is it getting across these ideas better as a result or is it just burying them other something else more visceral that much of its audience focuses on and enjoys? It uses the hedonistic philosophy of Sadism and Libertine lifestyle and Marquis de Sade's novel as the framework for those critiques, and to illustrate the philosophy of the evil people in control. Like, there is something absolutely fascinating to choose a novel from 1785 by a known sexual deviant and lunatic who was born a nobleman, was well-educated, was politically involved in post-Revolution France, who's influence on writing and philosophy is still studied and criticized today, to illustrate the Fascism of the Republic of Salò in the mid-1940s (and, vicariously, Nazi Germany), only 30 years later in a mid-1970's film. All of that is too specific just to write off as extreme imagery for the point of novelty or navel-gazing. quote:“In the trilogy (Trilogy of Life films: The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales, and Arabian Nights), I evoked the ghosts of characters from my earlier, realist films. Not to denounce them, obviously, but out of such a violent love for ‘lost time’ that it came out not as a condemnation of one particular human condition but of everything in the present day . . . We are now irreversibly inside that present; we have adapted to it.” quote:De Sade saw his work, about the epic 120-day debauch of four pillars of French society, as a revolutionary act, designed to bring down the old order so that a new one might be established. As he described the debauch, though, he also indulged his own fantasies that passed through more or less commonplace sexual perversions to coprophilia, necrophilia and explicit torture of the young women and young men who had been kidnapped to share the hosts' pleasures.Mr. Pasolini has made a very significant change in updating this work, however. The four hosts—the duke, the president, the magistrate and the bishop—are now Fascists, expressing their ultimate desires as the world is crumbling around them in the last days of the fascist regime. They are no longer rebelling against God. They are demonstrating the evil of the human spirit, which is something else entirely, though I can't help but feel that de Sade and Mr. Pasolini share a peculiar delight in speculating about the specific details of this evil.For all of Mr. Pasolini's desire to make "Salo" an abstract statement, one cannot look at images of people being scalped, whipped, gouged, slashed, covered with excrement and sometimes eating it and react abstractedly unless one shares the director's obsessions. quote:“Salò” is ostensibly set in a real time and place, a short-lived fascist “republic” created by Benito Mussolini under German occupation. This was a controversial choice (fascist rule was well within living memory) and may seem like a distracting one, given that most of the film takes place in the enclosed, fairy-tale world of a villa taken over by the fascists. The rhetoric of the public officials (The Duke, The Bishop, The Magistrate and The President) who control the action moves freely between actual fascist slogans and rules taken from the Marquis de Sade’s writings. The film claims a kinship between real and imagined deaths; this, in fact, is its central philosophical claim, that political and pornographic dehumanization are the same kind of fantasy. Marquis De Sade's novel isn't only literature or philosophy explored in the film. The film is also structured similarly to The Divine Comedy, there are Nietzschean discussions inspired by "The Geneology of Morality", and ideas from Proust. The film isn't just "Fascism is bad, here is horrible visuals to sell that idea". The film tries to explore why Fascists pursue and crave power and control, the disturbing line between pleasure and pain, how people can be corrupted (as you'll see, some of the prisoners are happy to become torturers themselves if it gets them out of being tortured), the human capacity for survival; there's critiques on authoritarianism, nihilism, capitalism, morality, etc. The film is looking at actual significant literature (the Marquis de Sade's writings have been hugely influential to studies about human sexuality and perversion) and historical events and asking "Why does this happen? What does this say about humanity's capacity for evil? How do people derive such pleasure from someone else's pain?" quote:Back in 1975, Salò could easily be written off as the perverted imaginings of a twisted creative mind. Our 2018 world, by contrast, is one in which casual threats of sexual sadism are a fact of life for any female, queer, or trans YouTuber, virtually every fetish imaginable is up for grabs on digital media, and the world’s most powerful man is a fascist libertine with a well-attested appetite for inflicting cruelty. quote:While the victims in the film are shells of human beings with little for the viewer to latch onto emotionally, the four libertines doing the abusing are fascinating paradoxes — at once terrifying exemplars of the corrosive nature of absolute power but also mundanely human figures who spend most of the film appearing bored and dissatisfied. (Arthur Schopenhauer’s famous quote about the two enemies of human happiness being “pain and boredom” seems particularly à propos in this film.) For men who enjoy absolute power over their human prey, the libertines never appear to be enjoying themselves — their infliction of cruelty more akin to the angry urges of an addict in withdrawal than of a person partaking in forbidden pleasures. Fun — even of a pathological sort — is completely absent in Salò, even among those who can quite literally do anything they want at any time. quote:The main takeaway from Salò is that all of us possess the capacity to victimize. The collaborators, soldiers, and even some of the child victims themselves are walking testaments to the results of the Milgram experiment and other similar tests, as well as books like Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men, which have demonstrated how frighteningly brittle the human conscience is in circumstances that promote cruel and inhumane behaviour. quote:When we compare the source with the film, we find that being “faithful to the story” is a subtle stratagem designed to betray its substance. For example, Sade’s libertines are supermen, while in Pasolini’s hands they are impotent and have to resort to a thousand different tricks to become aroused. Sodomy is their sexual predilection, but passively. One of the most significant differences, however, concerns the crucial role Pasolini gives to the perverse pedagogical function exercised by the four monsters in dealing with their victims. quote:Indeed, Salò tells a story that remains hidden until the last narrative sequence, one that lurks quietly behind the flagrant horrors and acts of violence. It is the story of choosing a group of young people, at first from among the victims, and then atrociously eliminating those who do not, or cannot, submit to the codes stipulated in the regulations, that is to say, to the “laws that shall rule your life in here,” the ones read out loud by the duke during the first collective ritual in the film (the march in front of the entrance to the villa). These laws (taken from Sade) are paradoxical: normal codes of conduct (filial love, religious devotion, heterosexual Eros) are negated and condemned and replaced by practices that transgress social conventions (incest, sodomy, adultery). Once these norms are codified and imposed as law, they cease being what they were and become instead the norms of a new and sinister conformity that assimilates and wipes out any variation. Pasolini intended to depict what he described as an "anarchy of power," in which sex acts and physical abuse functioned as metaphor for the relationship between power and its subjects. Aside from this theme, Pasolini also described the film as being about the "nonexistence of history" as it is seen from Western culture and Marxism. It's also really important to remember that the torture and pain isn't the subject of the film. It is not pornographic, it is not titillating, and it is surprisingly reserved for what it depicts. This isn't "Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS" or "The Wizard of Gore", where the special effects and ludicrious perversity is the selling point. It is a byproduct of the themes of the film. quote:In “Salò,” spectatorship is domination, and the viewer is a complicit spectator. Many scenes are framed by doorways and windows; the shots often place the action at the exact center of the frame but far away, calling maximum attention to the camera eye. But the film resists the audience’s desire to see and linger. Pasolini does us the great kindness of making the film unpleasant to watch. (You can tell it is not pornographic because nobody enjoys it!) Physical violations are typically filmed from afar and with the victims’ bodies obscured. “Salò” offers a lesson in how to depict cruelty without re-enacting it—a lesson few filmmakers even want to learn. Nor do we get to know the victims as people. To give them personalities might imply that these personal characteristics are what make their suffering horrific. In “Salò,” it is simply the fact of their humanity that makes their degradation wrong. quote:The overwhelming emotion of “Salò” is dread. (The second time I watched it I was startled at the brevity of many of its most searing scenes.) The storytelling exists to provoke anticipation in both officials and audience—and dread in both victims and the audience. Dread is torture that takes place in the imagination; and “Salò” is, above all, an attack on the imagination. The essence of torture is not violence or physical pain but the dehumanization that necessarily precedes any cruelty. Torture requires a story in which the victims deserve it, do not matter, are objects, are fungible and available for consumption. The film is also heavily interested in storytelling in itself. So much of the story, especially some of it's most disturbing moments, is actually just a person telling a story to a room full of people. quote:Each movement of horror and domination is preceded by storytelling. The storytellers, all women dolled up in gowns and furs, describe their adventures in prostitution. They play up how much they loved the degradations they recount, and these stories excite the officials to enact various cruelties on the youths. The storytellers’ own helplessness emerges only in glimpses, as when one of them conspires with the silent piano player to rescue a girl from execution by performing a bizarre comedy routine. Pasolini was incredibly disturbed by the possibility of television, and how it could make people complicit with or numbed to their surroundings. quote:Among the many cruel and brutal rituals we see in the film, there is one that is repeated in obsessive variation right up until the end. It is the domestic scene of the three narrators, who, each in turn, tell stories and episodes from their own experiences to suggest new ideas with which to “entertain,” and above all arouse, the masters. The orgy room, dominated by the presence of the long table ominously placed at its center and thronged with spectators on both sides, is the space for a ritual that alludes to another. The audience there listening is the mass of corrupted and deformed TV viewers, the passive consumers of an indoctrination against which they cannot, or do not want to, rebel. This mode of pedagogy affects behavior (the narrators’ winks and gestures recall those of television anchors) and speech (the shock jargon used by the narrators and the four monsters). Every act of cruelty of the powerful four finds in this spectacle its main source of inspiration. It is where the idea of a contest for the “most beautiful rear end” is born (organized, not accidentally, by Signora Maggi herself, one of the narrators). The scene mirrors those televised contests in which a person’s dignity becomes the material for a squalid spectacle. This is a pretty nice closing argument: quote:Why, then, would anybody willingly sit down to watch this shabby little shocker of a film? Salò is ultimately a morality play, a cartoon-caricature depiction of what fascism (or any form of totalitarianism) does to everyone involved, from its innocent victims to the powerful people at the top of the totem pole. The four libertines are not unlike most if not all authoritarian leaders in history in that their tyrannical impulses becoming increasingly untethered over time, starting out as moderate firm handedness and culminating in unmitigated cruelty. Of the 20th century’s most notorious despots — Hitler, Mao, Nicolae Ceaușescu, Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe etc. — all became increasingly paranoid and tyrannical as time went by, while benefitting a steady supply of willing torturers and executioners. As such, Salò is the perfect microcosm for every despotic regime that has ever existed, or is likely to exist in the future. Franchescanado fucked around with this message at 22:51 on Feb 15, 2021 |
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Feb 15, 2021 20:23
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The Berzerker posted:I watched The Woods and it's perfectly competent but never develops the characters enough to really get you invested, and draws from much stronger films to wind up with a watered down version of them. It's not a bad movie, it's just not very good, and it will lose in a landslide to Re-Animator - rightly so. This is precisely how I felt. I really wish I could have tapered my expectations, as Yesterdays Piss/Garbage Baby did, but when I watch a Lucky McKee film I really want to dig into the weirdo lesbian characters, and they were so muted here. I was absolutely spoiled by May and Sicko.
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Feb 15, 2021 20:26
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Fran, for the record I have every intention to read and react to your post but its so dense that I figure its best to watch the film first so I have a better frame of reference for it and feel freer looking stuff up. But as always you've outdone yourself and I suspect I'll get more from your post than from the film. But I will watch the film because my inferiority complex demands I must since you made so much effort to explain why I should.
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Feb 15, 2021 21:13
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Salo is one of those movies that makes me wish I were smarter. It's a powerful movie to watch, because the atrocities are, at it's core, human. We all bleed. We all poo poo. We probably all have a kink that's maybe too embarrassing to share. We've all hurt someone. We've all been hurt. So on a basic human level, the movie works. It has a strange tone, like a fairy tale or a fantasy, which should immediately show you that the events are all allegorical or philosophical. No doubt, it is a movie that could be written about endlessly. I find it really enigmatic, and when, days after my first viewing, I'm still thinking about the movie--not about it's most gruesome moments, mind you, or the feelings it gave me--but about what it said upon it's release and what it said now, I get hungry for more information about it. It's also a strange film because the director was murdered three weeks before the film premiered. So, we don't get a director's commentary. There aren't any Q&As, post-premiere interviews, or supplements from the director. We don't get to hear the filmmaker's retrospective thoughts on the film. Kinda like Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, the film itself--by fans and scholars--is declared the final statement of the filmmaker. And when that film is puzzling, challenging, visceral, and weird, it just makes the drive to understand it even stronger (for me, at least). I absolutely believe this was the first film in a new trilogy by Pasolini--maybe the Trilogy of Death to counteract his Trilogy of Life, as some suppose, because it also feels like he only started digging into something greater.
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Feb 15, 2021 21:28
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That last quote is a particularly convincing defense of Salo, although I haven't seen it yet so I can't say if I agree. I definitely agree with it as a general concept though.
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Feb 15, 2021 22:37
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So the Salo vs. Ms. 45 matchup is definitely a very interesting one, even though my vote isn't changing. I wasn't really expecting Salo to be as good as it was on a technical level. It has cinematography that felt reminiscent of The Leopard(1963) and other "epic" style films. In that way it's sort of the opposite side of the coin to Ms. 45, because Ferrara's films go for grime over grandeur. It's a completely different path to what I think are similar goals. I think the difference between Salo and pretty much anything the horror genre has to offer today is how matter of fact it is. There's really not a whole lot of traditional drama to it, or the kind of stylization that we're used to with a lot of extreme horror. Compare it to Von Trier's The House That Jack Built, where there are incredibly disturbing and affecting scenes but always with layers of stylization between the film and the audience. Whether it be quick cutting flashbacks or hallucinations or a literal descent into Hell, Von Trier gives you an out by using the tools of film to maintain a separation between the audience and Jack's actions. Of course, The House That Jack Built is one of the more matter of fact and plainly disturbing films of recent years. In terms of stylization it's nothing compared to the average slasher where almost nothing reflects reality and the audience is given license to sit back and enjoy the mayhem. Salo gives you none of those things that pretty much all modern horror provides as a safety valve or pressure release. Is that better? Maybe not, I'm voting for Ms. 45 after all. I love NY Grime and I want to see more, and Ms. 45 is an excellent film so I'm voting for it. But I'm glad Salo exists and I'm glad I saw it. Thanks Deb!
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Feb 16, 2021 15:34
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Like 34 hours left to vote. I'll lock them up at 3 AM EST Feb 19th (or when I wake up) so if you're like me and you've been putting off aa film or two all week you've got just enough time to mentally and emotionally prepare, find the time, and scream at your computer because you can't figure out how to stream the video format to your tv.
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Feb 17, 2021 23:08
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Salo vs Ms .45 is an incredibly tough match-up for me, not least because these are both my teams going head to head. They're also excellent examples of their sub-genres, they do what they do with such expertise and seemingly effortless precision, that really it's difficult to tease out problems. In fact, it's hard for me to fault either film at any level. Both attend to their serious subject matter in a way that doesn't feel overly exploitative, both are emotionally and intellectually impactful, and both contain supremely iconic scenes that will be burned forever onto my retinas. Only one has a funky soundtrack, but I'll forgive Salo for that one trespass. So which child do I discard, and which do I hold close to my bosom? I can't really top what has already been said about Salo. It is a vicious takedown of fascist ideology, revealing it to be nothing more than infantile banal rapists who use their positions to aggrandize their own sordid vanities. In that, it plays the perfect complement to Ms .45, a film which glories in a violent and sometimes directionless singular revolution against the patriarchy, and while I appreciate what Salo does, it doesn't engage my heart in quite the same way as Ms .45, and at the core of that is Zoe Lund's masterful performance as Thana. When we first encounter Thana she's already unable to engage with the world around her, she is mute, completely silent, able only to communicate through snatches of words scrawled on discarded paper. She is surrounded by baying men, who seem eager to rope her into their awful fantasies, and she is unable to respond, unable to speak out, unable to scream, or cry for help. Thana is then viciously raped twice, and whilst she manages to lethally fend off one of her attackers, a masked assailant, played by director Abel Ferrara, remains at large, his last words haunting her "I'll see you again, I'll be back". Thus beginning a never-ending tirade of revenge to quieten the image of this unknown figure, who she now sees in every man around her. Thana then experiences a glow-up of sorts. At first, the trauma of her experiences creates an extreme anxious reaction in her, but through a daily regimen of therapeutic murder she discovers her confidence. I think here is really where Lund's performance really shines. In the choice to make Thana literally unable to speak out, Zoe is forced to use her facial expressions, her posture, her movements, her wardrobe, and her makeup to their utmost potential. She becomes a master of this visual storytelling, and it's absolutely captivating as result, pulling the story along effortlessly with her every smile, nod, and shrug. The real opposite to Thana is Darlene Stuto's Laurie, who can not only speak but is positively outspoken, and viciously proactive in fending off the attentions of scummy men. It is ultimately Laurie who stops Thana's directionless killing, after holding a knife at her crotch in a way resembling a phallus, she lunges at Thana, after Thana kills a gender-bending party goer, a man wearing a wedding dress. At that moment, the whole film appears to be a refutation of the seductive sectarianism of second-wave feminism and its destructive over-preoccupation with genitalia, instead proposing not simply idle dialogue, but true intersectionality. As a result, I just have to let my heart lead me, and vote for Ms .45. Salo I think really has the intellectual edge and the more pressing message, but Ms .45 delivers to me a personal little hug whenever I think about Zoe Lund's mischievous murderous face  It really isn't a choice for me at all, which is a shame, as I prefer Bon Appetite as a team.
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Feb 18, 2021 01:39
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Not coming here trying to be a contrarian but I just watched The Blob (1988) and I was bored out of my mind. Would love to get a perspective from someone who enjoyed this to talk about exactly why they liked this.
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Feb 18, 2021 08:00
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Is The Blob a good movie? I watched both versions and they both sucked imo but I would like to hear someone explain why they are good. edit: I realize I just said the same thing twice but I'm trying to entice a contrarian, a supermechagodzilla, but does anyone really care that much about the blob ulex minor fucked around with this message at 08:48 on Feb 18, 2021 |
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Feb 18, 2021 08:46
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I ended up voting Ms. 45 over Salo, based on the general idea that Salo is probably already recognized enough as extremely good that those interested will find it. I did find it relatively mild (though, that’s only compared to the reputation.) Ms. 45 is just too much fun and the title/summary is unassuming enough to be overlooked, and for that somewhat specious reasoning, I voted for badass gun nun and the wild sax. Oh and I voted for Re-animator over The Woods. In all, I thought it was a fun pile of movies for the week.
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Feb 18, 2021 10:32
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ulex minor posted:Is The Blob a good movie? You might get a better response in the horror movie thread. This one is for a directors knock out tournament
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Feb 18, 2021 10:47
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ulex minor posted:Is The Blob a good movie? The Blob ('88) rules, but yeah, you need to ask in the Horror thread. Watch Salo: 120 Days of Sodom and come back and join us.
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Feb 18, 2021 13:17
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The Blob, or the 120 Days of Sodom would be p. dope tbh
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Feb 18, 2021 16:00
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5. (Debbie Does Dagon’s The NYC Grime Connection) Abel Ferrara’s Ms. 45 vs. 12. (Debbie Does Dagon’s Bon Appetit!) Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom I was super dreading this so how’d it go? Ms. 45 was a complete surprise. I hate rape/revenge films deeply because I hate both of those things and don’t want to watch them. There’s been one film of its kind I can think of I’ve ever truly enjoyed but oddly now there’s two. When people said Ms. 45 was “fun” I thought they were telling me it would be fun to watch people be killed and slaughtered or something the way people have fun with slashers. But Ms. 45 is actually somehow funny. Ferrara manages to walk this bizarre line I didn’t even know existed between the tragedy and horror of what happened and just goofy stuff. Lots of silly stuff like a scene where Thana stoically fumes about her bess in front of a bathroom door saying “MEN”. Ferrara does a masterful job of starting with something incredibly horrible and then just gradually replacing the tension with humor piece by piece until that absurd final party scene. And then Ferrara has the nerve to end with a goofy happy ending. And the skill to make it work. I was so blown away by this that I ended up watching it a second time in 24 hours. Also Ferrara films NYC better than just about anyone else and all those incredible naturalistic scenes of Hells Kitchen, the Garment District, and Central Park just transported me back to my childhood growing up in Chelsea. I didn’t get Salo at all. I was bored for 2 hours. Bored and disgusted. It wasn’t as vulgar and gratuitous as I feared. Pasolini does a good job of showing the terrible thing without wallowing in it like many of the other extremity directors we’ve seen. That changes the message, I think and makes me never question Pasolini’s intention. What he’s showing is clearly terrible to him and he’s only showing as much as he feels he needs to to make his point. But what his point is, I don’t know. Obviously all of this is terrible and evil but the way its presented as this almost banal faux documentary just was odd to me. At no point of the 2 hours did I engage at all with it. With much of the reading its said that the intention was that by not having fleshed out protagonists the audience inserts themselves or sees the victims as just all humanity. But that just didn’t work for me. Nothing just ever felt real for me and the libertines felt so absurd and cartoonish that my emotions never got worked up. I was disgusted by what I was watching but when it was over I was mostly just annoyed I spent 2 hours watching it and that I waited until Ash Wednesday to do so when I was fasting and abstaining from caffeine. So its Ms. 45 hands down. I just don’t get Salo at all.
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Feb 18, 2021 16:28
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I also voted Re-animator and Ms. 45. I had started writing about Ms. 45, got pretty far into it, and then a power-outage took it away. Lost momentum to continue writing about it, unfortunately. Thankfully, Debbie succinctly summarized my first few paragraphs with this: Debbie Does Dagon posted:When we first encounter Thana she's already unable to engage with the world around her, she is mute, completely silent, able only to communicate through snatches of words scrawled on discarded paper. She is surrounded by baying men, who seem eager to rope her into their awful fantasies, and she is unable to respond, unable to speak out, unable to scream, or cry for help. Thana is then viciously raped twice, and whilst she manages to lethally fend off one of her attackers, a masked assailant, played by director Abel Ferrara, remains at large, his last words haunting her "I'll see you again, I'll be back". Thus beginning a never-ending tirade of revenge to quieten the image of this unknown figure, who she now sees in every man around her. There are two rapes at the start of the movie. The first one is a blunt act of aggression, power, control and cruelty on Thana. There is more time spent on her getting up and walking home than there is with the assault. The second rape is long. The camera leers on the rapist, who is taking his time and experiencing pleasure. It's quite gruesome, even if it consists of the rapist's face, the rapist's hands with a gun, Thana's face, Thana's hand on a glass apple. The glass apple feels like a play on the tale of the Forbidden Fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil from the book of Genesis. By taking the fruit and using it, she is propelled into a new world. It saves her from the destruction at the hands of a man, but begins her path of self-destruction. It's a harrowing scene, partially because it is disgusting seeing the rapist experience pleasure, partially because the Hitchcockian intercut between Thana's apple in hand and her gaining strength to strike and the rapist losing his guard, and partially because the scene feels so long. Each time I've watched the scene, I've said "Hit him already!", but the scene goes longer. It feels like Ferrara's response to the infamous rape in Peckinpah's Straw Dogs, a ghastly scene, one I do not care to rewatch, that lingers on the suffering of the woman and refuses the character or the viewer any closure. The previous paragraph is maybe rough to read, and it's uncomfortable to write, but it's one of several specific reasons why the film works so well, and honestly, is why the rest of the film is enthralling and exciting. "If you can get through the first 6 minutes of Ms. 45, you're in for a hell of a time" seems like an unnecessary sell, an off-color justification, but its the truth. The next scene propels the film off on a wild, unexpected direction: Thana does not call the cops. She chops up the body for distribution around NYC. She takes her rapist's gun--the titular .45--and keeps it in her purse for now on. The phallic weapon that was held against her as she was victimized is now hers to wield and use on other men. The portrayal of men in this film is hysterical (in the traditional use). They are lecherous, disgusting, aggressive, annoying, and entitled. Not a single one is deserving of sympathy. They are caricatures of the worst interactions men can force onto women: cat callers, the artist who tries to seduce with compliments and opportunity, the incel "nice guy" who stalks women because they "just wanna talk", the employer who justifies hitting on his employees because he thinks he's different or ignores the power play it involves, to whole gangs of men intending to rob and assault. All men are pigs in this film. This could feel ridiculous, but instead it alters the viewer's reality towards Thana's worldview. After Thana's rape, we are forced to see the phantasms of her masked assailant, with moments appropriated from Polanski's Repulsion. The film allows the viewer a lot of room in their relationship to Thana: we can empathize with her, we understand how she has resolved to murder men she feels are predatory, but we can also logically maintain that her murder spree is making her more unhinged and has moved beyond protection to antagonism. We can watch Thana murder men while knowing she is now a villain or anti-hero without feeling guilt. It is impressive filmmaking, and it is incredible that this is done through a character that never speaks in the entire film. Another glorious moment of Hitchcockian suspense is an act of subterfuge by Ferrara with this relationship between the viewer and Thana. Thana meets a sad-sack drunk man at a bar. He uses Thana, but not like the other men of the film. He bombards her with a constant flow of complaints against his ex. He waffles between hating women, being disappointed with women, and being scorned by women, ultimately telling a story of catching his ex in an affair with another woman. Thana is hungry to find any justification to kill this man, once she's got him alone. He doesn't really seem too interested in having sex with Thana, because he doesn't seem interested in Thana at all. He does not ask her questions, he does not try to learn about her; the conversation is about HIM. He is forcing himself on Thana, but as an selfish emotional burden, equally narcissistic and full of self-loathing. We listen to him go on and on, waiting for him to say something to criminalize him to Thana's. Finally she does, but the gun jams. An impotent shot aimed at a man mired by feelings of inadequacy. He is confused, then offended, but then, curiously enough, takes her gun, points it as his own head, and successfully kills himself. Of Thana's victims (minus party guests in the film's climax), this man is arguably the least deserving of murder, because Thana is stretching her definitions for who she kills, but irony allows him to take his own life. Ferrara draws inspiration directly from rape imagery from other well-known films, and has given the victim a gun and the ability to command their own destiny. He does not linger on Thana's suffering, and instead focuses 80 minutes of the film's 86 minute run-time on Thana's journey as a vigilante. Compare the structure of Ms. 45 to I Spit On Your Grave, where an hour of it's 101 run-time is spent on Camille Keaton's character Jennifer suffering rape after rape before empowering her. And even when she is empowered, most of her revenge involves offering herself sexually to her rapists to disarm them before she kills them. There is some value to allowing a character to control and use their sexuality for revenge--Jack Hill's Coffey is a great example of this--but after all of the suffering in I Spit On Your Grave, it doesn't give catharsis. It just feels exhausting. Ms. 45 escapes these trappings because it does not sexualize Thana. There are no leering shots of her, the assaults are never titillating. The one shot that gets close to nudity--Thana looking at her body--is weighted in complex emotions for the character, sadness for the viewer, and becomes a jump scare, one of the most effective moments in the film. Thana reclaims her identity and grows empowered through embracing icons of Femininity--make-up and better clothes--and weaponizes them to entrap men so she can penetrate them with bullets. Ms. 45 seems to defy the idea that Rape Revenge movies shouldn't/can't be enthralling, or entertaining. When, really, what makes me respect the movie so much is how much of a power fantasy it is for a rape victim. The entire film is cathartic in a refreshing way. There is a lot of discussion, as of late, with films like The Nightingale and Promising Young Woman, on how Rape Revenge films should tackle it's story, and where their proper place is in genre fiction and film. Ms. 45 is a shining example of the genre. It empowers the victim. It explores the devastating affect rape has on an individual, the people around them, and how they interact with the world after. It shows the inherent flaw with any type of revenge. It does all this without compromising the character, the themes, the genre, or the audience's interest in entertainment. The concept of Rape and Rape Revenge is too heavy, too nuanced for one film to ever be a definitive statement. Victims of sexual assault deal with it in their own ways. I can fully understand a person that does not think that such a serious subject should be given an entertaining perspective. I feel, however, that there is room for such a thing, that entertaining an audience while also sharing serious ideas and themes without compromising said ideas and themes, is a triumph of a creative endeavor. That's for the individual to draw their own distinction of Good Taste or Bad Taste. For me, Ms. 45 is one of Ferrara's best films, and a fascinating film to have available. This is long as hell. And I could continue to talk about this movie! I didn't even discuss things, like how the film compliments the Apple that begins Thana's journey as a vigilante with her dressing up as a nun at the costume party where her journey ends. There are plenty of specifics and fun details, like the trumpet song at the end of the film reflects the siren-like music cues that accompany Thana's panic attacks. There's just so much good stuff in this. Franchescanado fucked around with this message at 16:48 on Feb 18, 2021 |
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Feb 18, 2021 16:32
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Here's a fun link between two competing movies: Ms. 45's director, Abel Ferrara, has directed a film about the director of Salo: 120 Days of Sodom, Pasolini, called "Pasolini", with Willem Dafoe as Pasolini. The original vision for the film was to have Zoë Lund, star of Ms. 45, play Pasolini: "...one time in the 90s, we were going to try to do Pasolini's story but only with Zoe as Pasolini; a female director living the life that Pasolini lived." Lund and Ferrara were collaborators, and wrote a film together called New Rose Motel, and she was going to write the Pasolini film with him as well. Sadly, her death by overdose ended that iteration of the film, which was shelved for 14 years. Zoë Lund also showed up last tournament, in the Larry Cohen film Special Effects, which didn't do too well.
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Feb 18, 2021 17:25
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Thats funny because when we were watching Ms 45 I suddenly remembered Special Effects. It was a terrible film but it was also like this cinema verite tour through NYC that left an impression on me. I said no one films NYC as naturalistically and real as Ferrara does but Larry Cohen is the closest. And really, I'm kind of embarrassed I didn't mention Lund anywhere in my post. She put in an absolutely remarkable performance and deserves probably as much credit as Ferrara does for how Ms. 45 weirdly works the way it does. I really kinda loved Ms. 45 and I wish I had more to say about it but the combination of me watching it on Sunday and just not posting until now because I was putting off Salo and me being kind of tired and hungry just has me unable to engage fully. STAC Goat fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Feb 18, 2021 |
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Feb 18, 2021 17:33
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Franchescanado posted:Lund and Ferrara were collaborators, and wrote a film together called New Rose Motel, and she was going to write the Pasolini film with him as well. Sadly, her death by overdose ended that iteration of the film, which was shelved for 14 years. It's a shame that I didn't get more out of New Rose Motel, it just didn't grab me, perhaps because I didn't buy the romance? Lund and Ferrara also co-wrote Bad Lieutenant, which I will sing the praises of until I lose my voice. I just wish it was a horror film so I could have put it on the team.
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Feb 18, 2021 18:59
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Reanimator, that was easy for me. Salo vs Ms .45 - Ms .45 also pretty easy. Salo is impressive in the way its shot and acted but I honestly found it pretty boring. Though I did gag for a portion of it and the eye trauma moment made me wince really hard. Ms .45 has a great performance, music, a lovely grimy nyc, and awful men being murdered instead of being in power.
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Feb 18, 2021 20:49
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I have to really thank Fran for providing comprehensive and excellent defences for both of my films I feel remarkably well cared for. I must say though that I'm reversing my vote, I'm instead voting for Re-Animator and I'm abstaining from my teams. While Ms .45 is probably closer to my preferred choice, I honestly can't choose, and I'd much rather leave it up to the crowd.
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Feb 19, 2021 00:48
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Its 3 AM and you know what that means! A new episode of WandaVision! Oh wait… wrong thread… Its that other thing I wait all week for and stay up to unhealthy hours in anticipation like its Christmas morning for!  We very nearly had our second shutout but there was one lover for The Woods out there that kept Lucky McKee from the indignity. But he’s out first round for the second year in a row and he takes Tyler McIntyre with him. On the other side Passoli’s controversial Salo put up a slightly better fight but still fell victim to Ms. 45’s path of rage. So Deb’s Abel Ferrara takes out her Bon Appetite team in a tragic civil war. That sends Deb’s NYC Grimes team into the second round for a clash with Stuart Gordon. We’re done with the 4/13s and 5/12s and move on to the 3/14s and 6/11s. Fun Fact, in the NCAA Tournament these four spots are historically where the most exciting upsets tend to happen. Once you get into the 7/10s and 8/9s its barely even an upset and 2/15s and 1/16s rarely happen. So its a bit disappointing that we had none through the first month. Will the 14s and 11s succeed where the 12s and 13s failed? We shall see. 3. (Irony or Death’s Team David) David Lynch’s Eraserhead vs. 14. Don Coscarelli’s John Dies At The End  Davids Lynch and Cronenberg both made big runs last year before Cronenberg knocked Lynch out in the Hateful Eight. Lynch spent his long run never drawing what is arguably his most famous film but he gets it right out of the gates this year as his weird rear end cult classic comes to play. On the other hand Coscarelli fell first round last year (to Paul WS Anderson and a Resident Evil sequel no less) after drawing one of the films he’s not known for in Survival Quest. So this time he… once again doesn’t draw Phantasm or Bubba Ho Tep. Them’s the breaks. Still its weird against weird here so does Coscarelli have the chance to notch the first upset of the tournament? It seems like a big ask based on last year’s record. Eraserhead is on HBO Max, Criterion, and free on Kanopy in the US. John Dies At The End is on Magnolia (I didn’t know that existed either), and free on Hoopla and Kanopy in the US. 6. Rob Zombie’s 3 From Hell vs. 11. (STAC Goat’s Team Universal) Jack Arnold’s The Incredible Shrinking Man  While its true that 1 and 2 seeds rarely fall in the NCAA tournament Rob Zombie was the only 1/2 seed to fall in the first round last year despite drawing one of his most critically popular in Halloween II but still falling to 16 seed Kaneto Shindō’s Kuroneko. Jack Arnold also went down first round to Zombie’s 2 seed John Carpenter but with a less than critically popular film in Revenge of the Creature. James Whale had a taste of the second round glory but he’ll be on the sidelines and it will be up to Arnold to knock off Zombie’s Firefly Trilogy conclusion. Can Zombie find some redemption here in a lower seed or will it be a second unceremonious first round upset for him? Sequel Note: 3 From Hell is a direct sequel to Devil’s Rejects. You probably could watch it alone but you’d definitely be missing stuff. Rejects is a loose sequel to House of 1000 Corpses. Its the same characters… kinda… but a very different film. You could definitely skip that one and not miss much besides Captain Spaulding, who isn’t really in 3 From Hell (RIP Sid Haig). Still they are all in continuity and effectively a trilogy. So you do you. 3 From Hell is on Shudder, AMC+, and DirectTV in the US. The Incredible Shrinking Man is on the Criterion Channel in the US. House of 1000 Corpses is on Amazon Prime and Roku and free on TubiTV and Hoopla in the US. The Devil’s Rejects is free on Tubitv and Pluto in the US. I’d like to say its a week that finally is a little lighter but 3 From Hell was actually kind of tough for me, even though I love Rejects. I’m not afraid of watching it though which makes the first week in awhile I’m not dreading something. Whew. Although I still have some residual David Lynch trauma from last year. But for everyone else it looks like an interesting week. And one I probably won't have to do much more than find time to rewatch some prequels before the stream. Vote until 3 AM EST Feb 26th (or when I wake up) Bracket & Noms Spreadsheet Letterboxd List
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Feb 19, 2021 09:03
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John Dies at the End is my only new film here, but I haven't seen The Incredible Shrinking Man since I was a child, but if memory serves its wonderfully sad mournful tale of loss and alienation will easily beat out Zombies' limping third entry in the Firefly franchise. Both should be fun matchups in any case. Stream announcements coming once I wake up.
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Feb 19, 2021 13:54
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My latest Eraserhead rewatch was less than 2 months ago but I've never seen John Dies at the End, it's also on Prime in Canada. I watched 3 From Hell as part of the October horror challenge but haven't seen the Incredible Shrinking Man, so two new ones for me this time around.
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Feb 19, 2021 14:23
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STAC Goat posted:3. (Irony or Death’s Team David) David Lynch’s Eraserhead vs. 14. Don Coscarelli’s John Dies At The End Wow! What matches! David Lynch is my favorite director, and Eraserhead's been one of my favorite films for half of my life. Last time I saw it was at a midnight screening as part of a film festival. This time I'll be watching it on the Criterion blu-ray. I just finished Don Coscarelli's John Dies At The End, so I know everything about that movie's production, but I haven't seen it yet. I also haven't read the book. I love Don, so I'll give him a fair chance, but he's fighting a losing battle. I saw 3 From Hell in theaters when it was premiering everywhere for a limited run. I had a really good time with it! It's lighter than The Devil's Rejects, feels a lot like Rob Zombie channeling his interest in westerns, and the cast has great chemistry. It should feel redundant, but it has enough of it's own identity to justify itself as a third entry to an interesting trilogy. I've only seen The Incredible Shrinking Man as an MST3k episode, and I don't remember much. I will be watching this without the bots. Which movie will I write about the most? Will it be Eraserhead, a movie I can probably talk about endlessly? We'll see!
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Feb 19, 2021 15:08
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3 From Hell vs Incredible Shrinking Man is a great matchup. If you haven't seen Incredible Shrinking Man you might be surprised at how weird it gets. And 3 From Hell is a splatterpunk masterpiece.
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Feb 19, 2021 15:18
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I need to watch The Incredible Shrinking Man first, but there's a good chance that I'll try to put up a defense for 3 From Hell. While it's not perfect, I do think it's still extremely Rob Zombie and an excellent representation of the crazy poo poo that goes on in that mad genius' head. The Sig Haig thing is tough. It's hard to watch the movie without thinking about how much better it would've been if Sid could've been there full time at full strength. At the same time, I can't imagine anyone doing a better job filling in than Richard Brake, so there's a bit of a silver lining there.
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Feb 19, 2021 15:30
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I was pretty underwhelmed by 3 From Hell so Shrinking Man very much has the opportunity to get my vote. Never seen it so I have no idea if it will but if Universals had drawn Bride, Creature, of Old Dark House I'd be 100% pimping for my team. I saw John Dies at the End years ago but all I really remember is it was weird. I saw Eraserhead in October and didn't get it. So its gonna be a weird case of which film actually hooks me. Of course Lynch is gonna runaway with it so I predict I'll be on the wrong side of the vote again.
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Feb 19, 2021 19:37
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Life got in the way of the last round - I *was* able to see the only movie that was new to me, The Woods, but felt I couldn't give a fair vote without rewatching the others - Salo I haven't seen in something like 20 years. But I'm very excited for these new matches! I have seen all of them but I'm looking forward to a rewatch.
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Feb 19, 2021 19:50
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