it's a take on an ancient euripides play. makes sense since director and the other writer are both very greek.Alexhead wrote:I don't know the symbolic background but I quite liked it as a horror movie. Messed up ending.
Ding ding ding!TC wrote:The Devils - "In 17th-century France, Father Urbain Grandier seeks to protect the city of Loudun from the corrupt establishment of Cardinal Richelieu. Hysteria occurs within the city when he is accused of witchcraft by a sexually repressed nun." yeah, that. also, lots and lots of acid was consumed, i assume. this is one bonkers film. first half is kind of slow burn, not really sure where this is going to go, then it takes a very hard right turn into nutso. everyone should see this at least once. a couple powerful performances flanked by a ton of over the top insanity and what someone assumes to be period dialog. it is quite striking for sure.
i finally caught this yesterday. it is certainly very high atmosphere, slow burner kind of a piece. his stuff to me seems much more about mood, tone, and atmosphere than necessarily the content. i'd wager the dialog script for this was half as long (or less) of most 90 minute films. which is fine by me. i enjoyed watching it, liked it fine, but didn't really leave me thinking about it afterwards. it's a high-art 70's kung-fu film, minus most of the kung-fu. guy's brother gets killed, brother seeks revenge, sort of, is guilted out. even JCVD did a couple films with pretty much this plot. but it certainly was artful.Alexhead wrote:Earlier this week I watched Only God Forgives, beautifully shot as expected, kind of a trifle of a crime drama story, much darker and less appealing than Drive. Based on watching 3 Refn films and reading a couple of interviews, I think dude has a cinematic violence fetish and his movies are just excuses to string together moments of human on human cruelty.
yeah here was my initial take. good stuff.TC wrote:Beyond The Black Rainbow - someone told me awhile back that this was a lynchian horror movie. well, it's not really a horror movie, but holy shit did it go out of its way to be "lynchian". another way to describe it would be an acid trip in film version. the lead male actor delivers probably the most creepy performance i've ever seen. as a film, the first 1/2-3/4 is very interesting, you're wondering where they are going. then you get the feeling they suddenly realized they had no ending and threw something together. it totally goes in a completely different direction to provide an ending when leaving it open as a sort of film study would have been more satisfying. scenes of the girl walking as slowly as humanly possible - while pretty much fitting with the tone of the rest of the film - seem to have been left as long as possible to draw out the length, again lending to the feeling that they really had no idea where they were going with this. very much worth watching for the extremely creepy/uncomfortable first 3/4 and excellent very dark '80s synth score.
