It’s been a while.
Loved One Battle After the Other. Totally agree w/ Penn’s nomination for “Best Portrayal of a Throbbing Neck Vein”. I was more pleased than most, apparently, w/ Edgar Wright’s Running Man remake. Between the two of them, that’s not a bad sampling of anti-fascist filmmaking. Add in Sisu 2: Road to Revnge’s gleeful slaughter of Stalinist post war Russian baddies and there was some almost hopeful sentiment in the multiplex.
Primate is a straightforward monkey slasher, and that title is everything you need to know. Chimp at home. Rabies. Hilarity ensues. Of special note is that the ape is, largely, practical. A guy in a chimp suit. Incredibly effective. It is the equivalent of a plain ol’ grocery store steak that you cooked at home your usual way and it just came out chef kiss perfect.
28 Days Later: The Bone Temple is quite interesting. Flawed, certainly, but adding more complexity to what is an already belabored ‘zombie/infected’ metaphor. I will say this much: the scene of Ralph Fiennes fire staff spinning to Iron Maiden’s “Number of the Beast” is worth the price of admission alone. If that doesn’t make you want to see it, then it’s probably not for you.
Lady Snowblood, a Japanese 1973 sword-fighting revenge flick, famously one of Tarantino’s chief inspirations for Kill Bill, is just relentlessly cool, with all that 70’s style and a jazzy soundtrack to boot.
Time of Roses- a 1969 Finnish film that is the county’s first sci-fi film, filled with Edie Sedgwick-like models and transparent inflatable furniture. An interesting curio and very “of its time”, but with a lot of profound intellectual discussion that probably sounded better if you were a stoned Scandinavian.
Finally-
Dancer in the Dark (2000) - dir. Lars Von Trier
No one does ‘bleak’ like Von Trier. Icelandic singer Bjork is musical loving Czech immigrant Selma, who is going blind, and scraping together every cent she can earn at the metal stamping factory so her son Gene doesn’t also go blind. Bjork’s performance is absolutely heart-rending. This film sits along side such “feel bad” classics as Grave of the Fireflies or Threads or Where the Wind Blows. A number of the people in the theater were openly weeping when walking out.
This is a fantastic film. Bjork took home the Golden Lion award at Cannes for her performance. I’m glad I’ve seen it. I might never see it again.
