The secret of the dark room

Emotionally macabre. The scary thing is how does this film get me to empathize to actually truly feel the sorrow and sadness for these deplorable pathetic irredeemably selfish toxic deranged lost souls?

 

Daguerrotype (2016, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) is a gothic ghost story through which Kiyoshi Kurosawa returns to themes of men with obsessive inabilities to relinquish their chokehold on the past on a woman on their delusional fragile identities lost intwined therein. Who cares right?
     Me. I’m into these loser goth boy crybaby fables. So emo. The dark room is such a great image system in Daguerrotype. It’s STÉPHANE HEGRAY’S troubled psyche. Stéphane has this fixation on daguerreotypes as a figurative manifestation of his paralyzing desire to preserve a foregone past ultimately to the point beyond which it may even have existed. A past where he seeks to objectify immobilize immortalize the women in his life closest to him. And as he’s losing his hold on it he drinks himself away losing his hold on reality on himself on his health on life.
     But this dark room image system also serves a secondary function. JEAN is this young either too lazy or too desperate to earn an honest living drifter type whose morally polluted psyche is just as dark as Stéphane’s. Daguerrotype lays out this whole climate of young men not being able to find any work resorting to drastic means giving up or compromising to survive. Again this unemployment horror is more profoundly disturbing than Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s supernatural flourishes but they’re not competing they’re in balance with one another. I just can’t resist stressing how effective they are.
     So in contrast the other image system is MARIE as bright room. In the second half notice how she literally brightens the room with gold light when Jean goes there. But there’s also the contrast between her father Stéphane’s passion hobby this cold inanimate poison antique with hers botany nurturing this living regenerative life giving delicate greenhouse. And of course the outcome of improper disposal of the waste from the mercury.
 
When photographing Marie why does Stéphane build that life size daguerreotype though? The answer probably isn’t worth spelling out. That’s the kind of ambiguity Kiyoshi Kurosawa is master of. Does Stéphane actually see the ghost of Marie? Why doesn’t Jean? Why do we hear her say Dad? Who was the young woman the appraiser sees upstairs? DENISE?
     The tragic irony is in the dark room the master passes down everything to the apprentice. The powerful way it does so is it’s unbeknownst to Jean until it’s too late. And even then he probably never realizes it. Covering it up burying it under his own self-delusion. Psychologically so on point it stays with you the antithesis of beauty. 

motives patterns and continuity

Shochiku. Lavish production values. First of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s late masterpieces. There’s always been something about the police procedural genre of movies that has this familiar cozy nostalgic inviting intellectual sensation of relaxed paced learning where the journey is the reward as much as if not more than the outcome.

     Creepy (2016, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) is a studio movie. Wall to wall emotional underscoring emphasizes the suspense cuing us when and how to respond. Instantly and thoroughly accessible engaging. Broad. Unabashedly crowd pleasing. Until it isn’t.
 

The procedural makes detectives of us all. At that house in Hino City who were those five bodies? Or for that matter this might be obnoxious of me to ask but if they were vacuum sealed in those body bags why does NOGAMI have that repulsive retch smell reaction in the house? It’s the three Hondas and two Mizutas right? No these questions aren’t important. Aren’t as compelling as.
     What hold does NISHINO have over MIO? When he gives her Nogami’s gun we notice how she doesn’t for a second seem to consider using it on him. How does she still go to school every day?  Why wasn’t SAKI HONDA susceptible to Nishino’s influence even though the rest of her family was? How was she allowed to live? What does she remember? 
     Before I get any further it’s worth mentioning that Creepy isn’t grounded in the verisimilitude of what we might call the real world nor is its logic what we might call accessible. It’s cinematic which is better. Embrace artifice and you won’t be disappointed. The ways the lives of Mio Saki YASUKO and TAKAKURA are affected is what’s relevant here. 
 
Nishino is the embodiment of Evil. He only wears black. He only gets others to enact his heinous crimes. Although never called heroin by name he uses so called shots to enslave his victims. This figure through cinema is a symbol of the psychological anomaly in society that makes men evil. 
     But the big twist thematic conceit of the film is what does pure evil really want? To have his own happy family. To live right next door to you. To have the perfect little life we all want. And that’s what’s so scary. Antisocial Personality Disorder psychopath doesn’t fit the profile categories of motives patterns or continuity because he wants to be just like you. 
     As trad as Creepy starts off the second half and into the final act the façade shatters. Just like Nishino. And it will be because he pushes it too far. Just as the narrative does. The narrative transgresses by pushing us too far. It operates on our limits until we can’t take anymore either. It doesn’t play fair. 
 
The circumstances under which we may observe Nishino preying upon Yasuko is sublime. There are two key scenes between just she and he where the color is boosted. The greens of the grass and skintones saturated for a brief moment in this otherwise subdued washed out palette. Why? Even the filmmaking techniques are pushed too far.
 
In closing some movie nerd miscellany. In that trope scene where Nishino and Takagawa see who can get Yasuko to choose between them the cut does this thing I know Kiyoshi Kurosawa does in his later work I have been obsessed with for a while and haven’t spoken with anyone else about or read about in any helpful way but I wanna call it a match reverse.
     Specifically a wide where the perspective although it may contain depth is flat in the sense of frontal geometrically even horizontally. So when it cuts to the reverse each of the bodies of the characters are shown in the exact same size of the previous composition and placement in said previous frame. My guess is they have a video playback person put an overlay on the image to achieve this. I don’t know if I’m even properly describing this. But anyways. 
     Also around the midpoint when Nogami opens that sliding heavy metal door it totally gives The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974, Tobe Hooper) iconic vibes. Even more so because like in that movie he enters without being invited in and no one is around. That hypnotic yellow pinwheel fan spinning. If I said it was reminiscent of the Texas tower windmills I’d be pushing it too far.

10 Favorite Movies Seen in Theatres 2016

1.  Voyage of Time: The IMAX Experience (2016, Terrence Malick)
2.  Wiener-Dog (2016, Todd Solondz)

3.  The Neon Demon (2016, Nicolas Winding Refn)
4.  Café Society (2016, Woody Allen)
5.  Knight of Cups (2015, Malick)
6.  Love & Friendship (2018, Whit Stillman)
7.  Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016, Tim Burton) 
8.  The Handmaiden (2016, Park Chan-wook)
9.  Hail, Caesar! (2016, Ethan Coen, Joel Coen)
10. Personal Shopper (2016, Olivier Assayas)

The More Jobs We Do with These Guys the More They Squeeze Us

2 of the most enduring sub-genres of crime: cop drama and heist thriller.

Cold open. Inside a car MICHAEL BELMONT (Chiwetel Ejiofor) discusses some details about the next heist he and his team will hit. A foreshadowing occurs in this first shot. Tight, dark, and with barely any information on the screen, it gives the feeling of being lost and afraid or at least of being somewhere you shouldn't be. It's not movie-lighting dark, it's is something wrong with the screen dark.

Michael's talking with brothers RUSSELL WELCH (Norman Reedus) and GABE WELCH (Aaron Paul). They'll need 2 more for the job: MARCUS (Anthony Mackie) and FRANCO (Clifton Collins, Jr.). There's a collective apprehension about doing another job with Russian mafia gangster IRINA (Kate Winslet).

Then the opening credits.

Triple 9 (2016, John Hillcoat) understands how to focus on the dangerous atmosphere of its group of 5 bank robbers, and it seems to play out so well because it just sticks to the facts. There are never any distractions from the plot. And Triple 9 is all about plot. Although the action sequences give the film its character. Before the opening credits have finished, the crew has already geared up for their job. The opening First City Bank 3rd & Peachtree bank robbery with the exploding red dye packs brings a lot of energy with it, and there's momentum to back it up. Crime thriller. The movie hits the bullseye, I'm telling you. The way it works within the genre, it's never misguided.

The ensemble cast is terrific. The best part about the cast is that they're featured just enough to become tapestry, and then attention is always on to something else. To cut to the chase, everyone except Marcus' partner CHRIS ALLEN (Casey Affleck) is corrupt and none of them are likeable except Chris and Michael. So Triple 9 sets up Atlanta, GA as a crime-ridden ghetto warzone between the police, Russian mob, and Mara Salvatrucha 13 Mexican street gang.

Michael is almost too likeable. He worked for Blackwater in Iraq years ago where he met Russell and they worked special ops. He was married to and had a child together with a gorgeous hot model Russian woman, ELENA (Gail Gadot) who's sister is Irina. He's the leader of the crew. He's the badass and the smart one. And his only care is his son, whom he shares joint custody of with Elena.

Marcus is Anthony Mackie at his most loathsome. Smoking Black & Milds, driving with his pistol on his lap, and full of nothing but hate and a short temper, his every action feels calculated to make us hate this cop. Same with Franco. But that's another thing that gives the movie its modern edge. We sympathize more for Chris because of what he's up against all around him; and it's his own partner who he need fear most.

Like I said, the rest of the characters are scumbags and lowlifes. But, my favorite actor himself Woody Harrelson as DET. JEFF ALLEN, uncle to Chris Allen, is one of the strongest supporting roles in Triple 9. Jeff smokes joints like some cops smoke cigarettes, lives alone in a living room strewn with empty bottles and trash, and is consumed by his profession. He heads the special crimes division and fights what he calls "the demon." Hell no does he look like he has any business being a cop, he's psycho. But Triple 9 lacks the traditional moral boundaries, and Jeff comes off as the good guy, having adjusted to the responsibilities of being a cop the only way he knows how with what he's up against. The scene at the bar when he's wasted and slurs the provocation: "hey any of you motherfuckers strapped right now?" lets us know what he's about. He's not good anymore, but one time he was. Maybe I like Jeff because I know the Hank Quinlan in him.

I can't believe I can still say this, but Triple 9 is realistic. It rushes through the tense days desperate to see out the final outcome of the high stakes involved, yet doesn't shift into overly melodramatic, political, or character development timesucks like this genre has often suffered from. And the tone always feels like impending doom (the wall to wall low atonal metallic electronic drone score is great), like everything's going to go wrong, but through most of the movie we're watching how expertly proficient the cops and the robbers perform their missions. And it's fresh.

Another of the big set pieces, the projects raid is the obligatory shootout, but god it's so good. That leads to the Homeland Security Holding heist following immediately after. Also what's that they use in the heists, a taser cannon? That's awesome. All the action sequences feel like someone really knows what they're doing, giving them the attention and skill to make them good. Another great chase in itself is Jeff's speeding pursuit through traffic to the 999.

Again Triple 9 is really about Det. Jeffrey Allen. At the end, with some flecks of blood splatter on his face, that last shot, when the camera freezes on him and then slowly zooms in for a few seconds, I ask myself: why was he in that cop car instead of calling it in? I don't know, but it stays with me. That's some Hank Quinlan.

--Dregs

Would that It Were All So Simple

At least half of the Coen brothers' movies are set sometime during the 1920s-1960s and all of their films take place in America. The brothers are among the brightest talents to emerge from American independent cinema in the 1980s. Their diligence resulted in the back-to-back independently produced hits Fargo (1996, Coen brothers) and The Big Lebowski (1998) securing their futures with the freedom to continue working on projects of their own choice.

I've learned that some Coen brothers movies stay with me. Barton Fink (1991, Coen), Fargo (1996 Coen), The Man Who Wasn't There (2001, Coen), No Country for Old Men (2007, Coen), and A Serious Man (2009, Coen) for example, are what I call the heavy ones. They're dark, sure, but they also all open with angst and a foreboding, ominous, dark moral storm already brewing that never lets up.

But I've also learned that my response and relationship to their heavy ones doesn't interfere with my enjoyment of their lighter work.

The setting of Hail, Caear! (2016, Coen) is what is most important about it. 1950s Hollywood connotes myths, rumors, and gossip about stars, communism, sex, drugs, and all sorts of lurid pulp fodder--pretty much the dramatic elements of every James Ellroy novel. But we also have novels like Day of the Locust, The Last Tycoon, and What Makes Sammy Run? that provide similar noir tones to the fatal peril of Hollywood's lure. The point is there's a lot about that time we'll never know.

But in the hands of the Coen brothers, Hail, Caesar! is a well-executed love letter to Hollywood studio filmmaking of the classical era. And the reality of technology's pace is hard to ignore. The first sound movie was 1927 and by the mid 50s, when Hail, Caesar! takes place, it is already the end of the studio era. So short. In addition Hail, Caesar! could likely be the last movie the Coens or Roger Deakins shoot on film.

Like the fake trailers from Grindhouse (2007, Rodriguez/Tarantino) or Tropic Thunder (2008, Ben Stiller), the movies-within-the-movie are the best part of Hail, Caesar! From the opening footage of Hail, Caesar! (the movie-within-the-movie not the movie itself) we get the thrill of knowing we're watching parody, knowing we'll only be watching a few moments of any given movie, yet still suspended in a mixture of nostalgia, recognition, awe, and contempt that that's what people actually watch.

Among the coincidental similarities in the movie, we have BAIRD WHITLOCK (George Clooney) playing a Roman politician; with the "Caesar" hairdo, we recall Clooney's breakout in ER with, what else, the "Caesar" hairdo. The dancing sailor played by Channing Tatum obviously isn't a far stretch from Magic Mike (2012, Steven Soderbergh). And the Esther Williams footage is all about Williams' star status, so Johansson is perfect casting.

Along with the footage of the Roman epic, the aquatic number performed by Scarlett Johansson was breathtaking, fun, impressive and the height of how high the success of Hollywood's studio system soared. Johansson swims in an underwater tank, air bubbles from her breathing, hair and makeup to the nines, in a body of water where a mechanical whale emerges in the center of Busby Berkeley-style synchronized swimming rings of female dancers. The spout sprouts a geyser rising and rising until Johansson is revealed atop its very peak, to gracefully dive down below. As she's underwater the camera moves in to be close on her perfect face as it arises, every hair in place, her make-up immaculate and unsmirched.

Tatum's Gene Kelly/Stanley Donen style  barroom dance number with all the sailors was too much. The Coens showcase so much of what still makes these old movies so magical.

While Hail, Caesar! may at times feel episodic, I think it only enhances the entertainment value of the movie. We want to just walk around the studio lot, that's why we came. The plot feels like a throwaway, kind of like Burn After Reading (2009, Coen). It's not really important what happens to MANNIX (Josh Brolin). Mannix is our entrance into the day to day chaos of what goes on behind and in front of the scenes. Hail, Caesar!'s ingenious ending makes it clear that this is just another week in Mannix's life, and it might not even be the craziest he'll deal with, not by a longshot. Mannix is also a great counterpart to the manic delirium of Hail, Caesar!'s pace. He's a pragmatist. And what a funny detail with him and his only apparent vice: he's quit smoking and when he finally goes to confession he admits to having a couple of cigarettes.

Last word on the cast, Ralph Fiennes as director LAURENCE LAURENTZ steals the show. As the gentleman director, Fiennes finesses the dialogue and I don't know who he's supposed to be, if anyone, but I'm guessing Ernst Lubitsch. For such a short amount of screen-time, Laurentz brings more comedy than I could have ever expected.

So aside from the macguffin conspiracy thread, Hail, Caesar! is escapist entertainment of the classic variety. Sure it's light, a diversion. And sure sometimes I wonder if that makes a movie a failure. But this time I say not. Hail, Caesar! is an excellent comedy, and one with wit, insight, and a genuine love of its subject.

--Dregs