An editor at Little White Lies released an awesome 12 minute supercut of his favorite 25 films of the year. I can’t speak to my own opinion of most of these films because I’ve missed all but three. Either way, the supercut is great and makes me want to watch some movies!
THE 25 BEST FILMS OF 2014: A VIDEO COUNTDOWN from david Ehrlich on Vimeo.
I know I’ve missed so many great albums this year, but one album I’m glad doesn’t fall into that category was the long-awaited return of everyone’s favorite (or favourite) melancholy Irishman, Damien Rice. My Favourite Faded Fantasy is well worth the eight long years we’ve been waiting.
The years away were apparently quite the growing period for Rice. And from what he’s said in interviews, during that time he was wondering right along with the rest of us whether he would ever release anything again. Before the hiatus, his life crashed and burned, his relationship with Lisa Hannigan publicly fell apart, and he forgot how to write music. It’s the sort of scenario we’ve seen in art for as long as there has been history. So often this is the part of the story that ends in self-destruction, suicide or overdose or at least the napalming of every good thing.
Damien Rice found his way out.
In an unsurprisingly honest interview you should read, he told Irish Independent: “I invited all these different sides of myself to dinner – the arrogant fucker, the really nice guy, the over-polite fella – and we all just sat down and had a lot of dinners together and slowly, when I made friends with all these different crazy personalities that were going on in my head, I started to feel less angry and less frustrated and everything just started to open up and then I started to reach for the guitar again and tinkling at the piano again, and I started spotting all these things that I had done in the past that led to this thing happening, and so my finger-pointing completely changed.”
The resulting album is remarkable. Rick Rubin’s production is beautiful; big strings and sparse vocals in just the right places, always with that autumnal feel Rice does so well. As much as any other singer/songwriter I know of, he exposes the entirety of his soul on the track and in performances. He is so remarkably honest in his music, and so it’s no surprise that he has released an album that overflows with the hard-fought clarity of that time in the darkness. Most often My Favourite Faded Fantasy sounds like a letter to Hannigan all these years later, still full of fondness, regret, and heartbreak.
I’d say I’m sorry for the circumstances while still grateful they led to the creation of this wonderful album, but Rice says he isn’t sorry for anything because of how much he’s learned. So instead, I just hope to apply some of his well earned lessons to my own life, inviting all of the hurting and disparate parts of myself to come together for coffee so we can figure out how to make amends and create something beautiful together.
2014 hasn’t been a great year for Roused to Mediocrity. I couldn’t honestly say it’s been a particularly great year for me either.
Part of the reason for the lull here at RtM is that I’ve been doing far less this year in terms of culture consumption, and without much to show for it on the other side. Books are the only form of culture and story I’ve engaged as usual, but movies and music and whatnot have been way, way down. I feel the absence quite a bit.
I didn’t know this until I spent most of this year ignoring this blog, but I’m a better reader when I’m writing for Roused consistently. And by ‘better reader’ I mean I see the things I enjoy more clearly. I’m better at noticing things that are beautiful and true when I am regularly writing about shit here. It keeps some part of my brain sharp when I’m always wondering how I can frame ideas in a short blog post that might get someone interested in something I think is worthwhile. The part of my brain that functions better when I’m writing here is one of my favorite parts, and in a brain as dysfunctional as mine, that means something.
As I wrote above, this hasn’t been a great year for me. I feel beset by failure and futility on all sides. I’m stuck, thwarted. Every part of my life is in grind mode all at once, and I have to keep pouring energy into things with nothing to show for it. But Emily reminded me tonight how much I’ve loved writing words out into oblivion here on RtM. It can be another source of discouragement, sure, but it also helps my mind function better.
My first attempt at blogging in earnest was at the now defunct VOX sometime in the mid 2000’s, and with a few pitstops in between I eventually ended up at Roused to Mediocrity. I quit and come back time and again, which is embarrassing, and I have no reason to think that won’t continue. Still, nearly ten years of quitting and returning means something. I’m not sure exactly what it is I’m afraid of or hoping for, but I do know that (this sentence feels insane to type) this blog makes me a better version of myself.
Here’s to more Roused to Mediocrity, and a better 2015!
Night Eleven: Oculus
“I’ve met my demons, and they are many. I’ve seen the devil, and he is me.”
I liked this one. It plays back and forth between two nights, 11 years apart, as a brother and sister attempt to destroy the cursed mirror that claimed their parents when the siblings were children.
It screws with your head, subjecting the viewer to the same perception skewing madness that the evil mirror causes for the film’s protagonists.
There were parts of the film that I loved and hated for the exact same reasons, and I can’t explain more about that without spoiling stuff. I can say more in conversation with folks who have either seen the film, or don’t care if it is spoiled.
Will I ever watch it again? Yup. At the very least, this one will most definitely make appearances at future Halloween Movie Fests.
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Night Twelve: We Are What We Are
“We have kept our tradition in its purity, and seek our reward in the hereafter. Amen.”
This is a dark, twisted, beautifully crafted film. Just like with Come Out and Play, I realized too late that this was a remake, or I would have watched the original first. Although, in my opinion, this film is vastly superior to Come Out and Play, so I wasn’t as disappointed that I watched the adaptation first.
For most of We Are What We Are, the film is stark and subtle, and it is all the more horrifying and creepy for all that subtlety. From the outset, Jim Mickle’s direction and some wonderful performances by the leads create a sense of quiet dread that gets under your skin and stays there well after the film is over.
Will I ever watch it again? Absolutely. I found myself putting this one off night after night because I knew it was going to be a disturbing one. While it was just as disturbing as I’d imagined, it wound up being one of my favorites from this year’s fest.
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Night Thirteen: Repulsion
“I must get this crack mended.”
This film is almost as sad as it is chilling. A story of the impact of sexual abuse, Repulsion is about a woman whose childhood trauma is causing her sanity to quickly unravel, with murderous results.
Polanski’s film is full of images drawing attention to all the various fabricated manifestations of masculinity and femininity, with most making it clear how unhealthy our perception of gender identity is.
Sexual commentary aside, the film is not without its horror. It moves with the slow rhythm of the dark heart that beats at its core. The first of Polanski’s apartment trilogy, Repulsion is a claustrophobic depiction of a chilling descent into madness.
Will I ever watch it again? Most likely.
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Night Fourteen: Suspiria
“Susie, do you know anything about… witches?”
I’m always careful when sharing negative opinions on this blog. Especially about classics. I hate when I hear people state their negative opinions as facts, which is often done with a tone implying that the holder of the negative opinion is so much smarter than all the rubes dumb enough to think the cultural artifact in question is good.
I didn’t like Suspiria, but I’m aware that it probably has more to do with me than the film itself.
The plot is loosely connected and unexplained nonsense. A fact most people agree on, which is why Edgar Wright described the movie by saying, “It’s like a dream you’ve had when you’ve eaten too much cheese.” That’s not necessarily a fault, it can work really well when horror is intentionally trying to feel like a nightmare. It just fell short for me in this instance.
Much of what was keeping me from enjoying the film was sound related. The dubbing is terrible (a common problem in Italian films of this era), but I could have easily loved the movie in spite of the bad dubbing, like some of my favorite spaghetti westerns. The bigger sound crime was actually the score. Many love it, and I appreciate its bizarre quality and originality, but hated it in the context of this film. It was way over the top, constantly trying to overwhelm the viewer and make them uncomfortable. Lots of moaning and ghostly yells within the score, with no connection at all to the events in the film. It was confusing to me in a film about listening for the sound of snoring and strange breathing and footsteps going the wrong way. I would think that called for a minimalist score, leaving the viewer stuck with those disconcerting and barely audible sounds, as opposed to a score that seems desperate to force you into believing something scary is happening, even when someone is merely leaving an airport lobby.
Will I ever watch it again? Probably not. Yet, I would be willing to watch it again with someone who loves it, in the hopes they can open my eyes to the film’s qualities.
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Night Fifteen: The Conjuring
“Want to play a game of hide and clap?”
This was the movie I was most excited to watch. It was wildly well received upon release, and as I’ve mentioned before, I love ghost stories. Sadly, I didn’t like it as much as I’d hoped.
The good: Early on there were an impressive number of enjoyable scares. Old school, haunted house style scares. It’s really well shot, and the creepiness and dread are solid early on. Some genuinely scary shit happens in the first third.
The bad: It’s really woodenly acted, which is strange with such a solid cast. It also goes off the rails in the final half because it does such a faithful job honoring what Ed and Loraine Warren were really like, which means their entire role as demonologists was a big evangelical push for the roman catholic church. The more time you spend trying to convince me this all really happened and it was the devil’s fault, the less time you’re spending trying to scare me.
Basically, all the stuff of the family being terrorized was great. All the stuff about the Warren family was boring and too earnest.
More creepy games of hide and clap! Less proselytizing!
Will I ever watch it again? No. However, I do need to try Wan’s film Insidious to see if that gets all the scares and less of the this allllll reaallllly happpeennneedd, woooooooooooo!
Night Six: Peeping Tom
“Whatever I photograph, I always lose.”
Peeping Tom is another one of those brilliant encounters I’ve had with great cinema thanks to HMF. As I’ve written before, it’s also a great example of why critics often suck, since they didn’t just say it was a bad movie originally, they acted like it was going to tear down society as we know it. Eventually, they changed their minds, thanks in no small part to Martin Scorsese championing the film as a masterpiece decades later (I fucking LOVE that guy).
The story of a murderer who films the final horrified moments of his victims was way ahead of its time in 1960, and the film shares quite a bit in common with another ahead of its time horror film from that year Psycho.
On my second viewing, I was struck even more by the film’s ability to have a main character who is at once creepy, evil, and heartbreaking.
One of my favorite HMF finds.
Will I ever watch it again? Yes. This was the second time, and there will be plenty more where that came from.
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Night Seven: Come Out and Play
“We started to hear voices around 11:30 last night. It was as though all the children on the island awoke at the same time. They all started giggling. And then screaming. They packed into the houses. Among their screams we also began to hear the adults, screaming in horror.”
I didn’t realize this was a remake, and I should have watched that first. The story of a couple visiting an island town in Mexico before the birth of their third child, and find that the children of the town have playfully murdered almost all of the adults.
Come Out and Play is stark and unnerving, visually it is really solid, but in the end it somehow failed to really hit me the way it could have. It creates atmosphere and dread well, but then fumbles at the goal line in a way I can’t entirely put my finger on yet.
Will I ever watch it again? No, I’d try out the original adaptation instead.
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Night Eight: Grabbers
“If we taint our blood with booze, we’re poisonous to eat.”
Grabbers was both enjoyable and a disappointment. It was good, but I feel like it should have been much better. So much more should have been done playing with the premise, which had tremendous potential.
Said premise being that an amphibious alien species crashes to earth off the coast of a small Irish island, requiring blood and water to survive. The monsters start feeding on the local humans until the humans realize that blood with alcohol in it is toxic to the aliens. Thus, the only way to survive is to be drunk.
The actors were lovely, there were plenty of very successful, very Irish jokes, but the film was flatter than it should have been with so much to work with.
Will I ever watch it again? Probably not, even though early on in the film I was really hoping this would enter the canon.
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Night Nine: The Changeling
“What do you want from me?! I did every thing I could!”
After tragically losing his wife and daughter in an accident, a composer moves back to Seattle to take a teaching position at his alma-mater (UW) in the attempt to move on with his life. He leases a mansion owned by the historic society and then, as one would reasonably expect, it’s ghost time.
Ghost stories have always been my favorite. When I was young, I loved and hated stories of hauntings and unexplained sightings of grey ladies, restless spirits, paranormal hotels and the like. It’s a different sort of fear than the visceral response to slasher films and the like. Stories around a campfire, paranormal installments of Unsolved Mysteries, looking forward to Snick every week for Are You Afraid of the Dark… I was attracted to anything that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up, that sent shivers down my spine, or created that odd pressure in my eyes that comes from a good ghost story, even though it would always make it impossible for me to walk down a dark hallway alone. It’s rare to find a good ghost story.
This one, for all its weaknesses, at least delivered the creepy goods several times because it didn’t rely on the usual over the top antics most “scary” movies use today. So many of the hauntings were so run of the mill and ordinary that they were creepier, because they felt more grounded in actual day to day experience.
Plus: George C. Scott!
Will I ever watch it again? Probably. Not for several years, but probably.
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Night Ten: You’re Next
“I stuck a blender in his head and killed him.”
Brutal, and darkly funny, You’re Next celebrates but deconstructs the slasher/last girl standing genre. It does this by showing us what it’s like if you dropped a badass who isn’t a complete idiot into the usual group of buffoons being offed one by one by homicidal maniacs.
It’s fun when the heroine turns the tables and the line between hunter and hunted, or slasher and slashee, gets blurred.
This one was a really fun time. Thumbs up!
Will I ever watch it again? Absolutely. This will be an every few years in October sort of film.
With seven months to go, we get the first trailer for the sequel for the most successful comic book movie of all time.
The trailer shows the dark tone of the film, but makes it clear there will still be plenty of big action. We get our first truly great look at the film version of the Tony Stark’s Hulkbuster armor.
A few folks were curious about the earlier editions of Halloween Movie Fest, so here is a convenient little compilation of links for anyone who cares.
2013 Nights 1-5
Frankenweenie
The Descent
Re-Animator
Les diaboliques
Peeping Tom
2013 Nights 6-10
Dead Alive
Citadel
The Awakening
Mama
Pontypool
2012 Nights 1-5
Shaun of the Dead
Frankenstein
Bride of Frankenstein
The Cabin in the Woods
Les yeux sans visage (Eyes Without a Face)
2012 Nights 6-10
Bubba Ho-Tep
Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (Bonus Movie)
Halloween
A Nightmare on Elm St.
The Innkeepers
Friday the 13th
2012 Nights 11-15
The Invisible Man
Ringu
The Exorcist
The Fog
Zombieland
Pontypool
Halloween Movie Fest 2010
Night 1 – Let the Right One In
Night 2 – [rec]
Night 3 – Brotherhood of the Wolf
Night 4 – Slither
Night 5 – An American Werewolf in London
Night 6 – Dawn of the Dead
Night 7 – Pontypool
Night 8 – The Devil’s Backbone
Nights 9-15 –
Including:
Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Monster House
Nosferatu
Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
The Fly (1986)
Shaun of the Dead
Dead Snow.
The Inaugural Halloween Movie Fest 2009
Full List, including:
1. 28 Weeks Later
2. Let The Right One In
3. The Orphanage
4. Ghostbusters
5. Poltergeist
6. Night of the Living Dead
7. Evil Dead
8. Drag Me to Hell
9. Trick ‘r’ Treat
10. Dead Snow
11. Dawn of the Dead (2004)
12. Shaun of the Dead
Night One: Freaks
“We accept you, one of us! Gooble gobble! Gooble gobble!”
Set in a circus, Freaks is a tragedy where greed and cruelty are the true deformities, but also, where people with physical deformities have some kind of weird code and they will fuck your shit up if you mess with one of them. So, you know, a laudable message wrapped in an antiquated way of dealing with different sorts of people.
In the execution of its drama, this film is as dated as one would expect. In the execution of its horror, albeit brief, this film is about as far ahead of its time as a movie can be. Unfortunately, it was so ahead of its time that people lost their shit and when the various censors were done with it a third of the movie had been chopped off. That thirty minutes of cut footage is now lost forever. The remaining film is a bit nonsensical in parts as a result, but is still impressively edgy.
I so wish I could see the original cut, especially the footage from the film’s climax that included more disturbing visuals, including implied castration… in 1932! Sadly, director Tod Browning’s career was derailed by the film’s controversy and resulting failure.
Will I ever watch it again? Probably not, unless someone unearths the lost footage.
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Night Two: Uzumaki
“Come into the spiral.”
Visually, it’s creepy and interesting. Uzumaki is imaginative and fresh. The film is also downright weird, both in ways that I enjoyed and in ways that were completely lost on me, but that could be a cultural thing.
To a certain degree it is like a David Lynch film, but it makes less sense. Yes, you read that right, it makes less sense than a David Lynch film. I think much of what made the film incoherent in most narrative aspects is a translation thing. Something got lost in the translation from the manga [by most accounts brilliant] to the screen, and something got lost in translation from Japanese to English.
So, while everything is tied together visually by the malevolent spirals, we are never sure why they are malevolent… aside from something about the words for mirror and serpent being pronounced the same way, and ancient mirrors being dredged up from the bottom of a lake. All of my confusion could be purely the result of a bad subtitle transcriber.
Will I ever watch it again? No, although I’d change my mind if it turns out there is a superior subtitle track a la Let the Right One In.
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Night Three: Sightseers
“The police announced today that they’re pursuing a ginger-faced man and an angry woman in connection with inquiries.”
A twisted comedy that succeeds because it delivers its insanity so subtly. The violence and comedy mix so well because each are played so straight. Lowe and Oram are brilliant (especially Lowe).
By today’s standards, the gore is fairly tame and the body count fairly low. The film is droll, but not over the top slapstick. So the tone of the violence needed to match the tone of the humor. One way they accomplished this was by making most of the murders take place in slow motion with no native audio, but a song playing over the scene, which somehow helped keep the tone even.
Will I ever watch it again? Not soon, but ask me again in a year or two.
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Night Four: The Blob (1958)
“Doctor, nothing will stop it!”
Oh, The Blob. Everything you expect from a B-Movie is here. Inept cinematography, strange pacing within scenes, confused acting from a silly script. Fantastic. This one also happened to launch a young Steve McQueen. So, on behalf of The Blob, you’re welcome, America.
My very favorite B-Movie trope on display here was the unintentionally hilarious dialogue. I’d share some of the lines with you, but they wouldn’t really land without the delivery by the actors in a given moment.
This one was a late addition to the list for HMF.
Will I ever watch it again? Maybe under some sort of influence and in the right company.
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Night Five: Carnival of Souls
“It’s funny… the world is so different in the daylight. In the dark, your fantasies get so out of hand. But in the daylight everything falls back into place again.”
If Uzumaki is a film I found harmed by its lack of narrative cohesion, Carnival of Souls is a film that is actually enhanced by it. It’s another film that is very Lynchian, although this one being a film that influenced Lynch instead of the other way around. In Carnival of Souls the loose narrative contributed to the nightmare feel of the film, constantly keeping the viewer off balance.
An independent film from 1962, some limitations are clear, especially in terms of the acting, and awkward editing and direction much of the time. I think there is a solid chance we see here the DNA that would later result in David Lynch fetishizing bad acting so often, especially as a way to add to a particular sort of creepy atmosphere.
The creepiness they were able to create with such limited resources is impressive. Along with the fun little winks and metaphors that are never oversold, but are left subtle. Too often storytellers are worried you’ll miss a symbol so they beat you over the head with it, Carnival of Souls just leaves it there for those with eyes to see.
The strengths and weaknesses both make it obvious why this is a cult favorite. It’s tailor-made.
I’ve finally gotten around to starting American Horror Story. Another one of the countless shows that have been on my ‘To Watch’ list for years. October seemed like a great time to get started.
I expected to like it, but I LOVE it. It was a genuine struggle for me each night to not start another episode and just stay up all morning binge watching. The first season, now referred to as American Horror Story: Murder House is such a great haunted house story. Now I’m halfway through season two American Horror Story: Asylum.
I like everything about the show, but the acting is the most impressive to me so far. Across the board the acting is solid, Evan Peters and Frances Conroy quite notable, but everyone takes a back seat to Jessica Lange. During her first scene I had the same moment I had seeing Kevin Spacey in the first episode of House of Cards, in which I realized it was a performance I could watch forever. It isn’t just great acting by Lange, there is something magnetic and uncommonly captivating about the performance. Genuinely remarkable.
At this rate, I’ll probably catch up with the show before the current Freak Show season finishes.
If you haven’t seen AHS yet and there is any chance you can watch a horror themed show you should watch it immediately!
I’m pretty sure the trilogy of Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight is the greatest love story ever told in film. I would need to think about this for a while to confirm I’m not forgetting about some glaring omission, but at the moment, that’s my opinion on the matter.
It’s just so real, so brilliant, and cuts so closely to the heart of romantic love and what it really means to be a person in the world. I think what I love the most about these films is that it is first and foremost about being human, about all of our own ideas and doubts and passions and contradictions. The love story is central, but somehow also very secondary. First comes each of these characters as fully realized individuals, then comes their relationship.
These are interesting characters in their own right who also happen to come into one another’s lives. They make each other better, with the way they encourage and challenge one another. Yet, they are two people who choose to share some of their life with the other, not one weird amalgam where neither can be fully herself/himself and both are sucked into a weird enmeshed rat king.
I wish there were more relationships like this in media, instead of the plethora of nauseating variations of unhealthy nonsense that normally gets perpetuated as true love, but is really just some degree of either naive wish-fulfillment or poorly disguised cynicism pretending to be a family sitcom.
