Search This Blog

Friday, January 19, 2024

IMITATION OF LIFE (1959) AT THE FILM FORUM

From 2015 on THE VAULT OF BUNCHENESS.

Lobby card from the film's original release, featuring Susan Kohner as the troubled Sarah Jane Johnson.

Just got back from the Film Forum's screening of IMITATION OF LIFE (1959), a film that has fascinated me since I first encountered it in the great Esther Newton's infamous "American Society On Film" class during my SUNY at Purchase college days. It's a re-imagining of a 1934 chick flick/"weepie" about two mothers, one black and one white, and their daughters, who all come together under one roof as a blended family and contend with issues of class, race, and family dysfunction, and the 1959 version is one of the all-time classic examples of a textbook emotionally-manipulative Hollywood soaper. Its examination of how American society of its era made true equality/harmony between blacks and whites in general unlikely at best and hauls out the longstanding tropes of the martyred, saintly older black woman who's the emotional backbone and real strength of the family (to both black and white factions), and the so-called tragic mulatto whose case of self-loathing is invariably more compelling than the upper-class travails of the white protagonists.


Sarah Jane (Susan Kohner), surrounded by white masks. Subtle it is not...

I won't spoil the plot's details but the 1959 IMITATION OF LIFE's portrait of Sarah Jane (Susan Kohner), the angry, self-loathing light-skinned daughter of a black father who's described as "almost white," is far more compelling than the rote rags-to-riches showbiz rise of its white main character (Lana Turner) and how her success leads her to unintentionally neglect her blossoming 16-year-old (Sandra Dee). The actress's storyline is not bad by any means, but it was something that was already seen numerous times prior to the film's release, however it's essential to the overall narrative by providing the perfect background against which to contrast the entwined lives of Sarah Jane and her mother (Juanita Moore) who works as the actress's live-in maid and bosom companion whose support and caring for the actress's daughter frees the actress to pursue stage gigs. Sarah Jane's rejection of her dusky heritage and her shattering desire to pass for white from an early age form the true emotional core of the story and Susan Kohner's Oscar-nominated performance renders the character's arc as nothing less than painful and heartbreaking. In short, if you have not seen this film, seek it out for Kohner's arc.


Which brings me to last night's Screening at the Film Forum, where I met the one and only Susan Kohner. Kohner's spectacular portrayal of the deeply troubled, self-loathing Sarah Jane Johnson struck a very strong chord with my mother's side of the family, especially with a certain aunt who basically was the character in real life. (Though Sarah Jane never ran into the same kinds of issues with the law that the aunt in question did, but the less said of that the better...) Following the film, Kohner sat for an interview with a film professor  — whose questions/expoundings were of little or no weight and who clearly missed the entire point of the movie he was allegedly such an authority upon; that assessment was shared by a friend of mine who was also in attendance and is a highly-knowledgeable film scholar and director of films herself — and later answered questions from members of the audience. Since the opportunity was afforded, I took the mic and told Kohner of how much her character and performance meant to my family and especially my aunt. Following that, she was also kind enough to pose for a shot with her that I will send to the interested parties in my family, especially the aforementioned aunt.

 Yer Bunche, with the one and only Susan Kohner.

Friday, December 29, 2023

NOT TONIGHT, I'M ON MY PYRAMID


Once again I cannot sleep, a state brought about by general anxiety over my mother and the endlessness of kidney failure/dialysis and by the fact that insomnia is just one of the many possible side-effects of the illness. I tried using Melatonin tonight but it did not work, so I lay awake staring at the ceiling, alone in my head with my thoughts. I finally gave up trying to sleep and instead sought a long, boring movie to hopefully lull me to sleep. I chose CLEOPATRA (1963), the legendary ultra-expensive Liz Taylor epic whose box office failure nearly bankrupted 20th Century Fox. 

I saw CLEOPATRA in bits and pieces during my adolescence, when it used to run divided into parts over five days on The 4:30 Movie in the '70's, but I had never watched it from start to finish, and without commercials. Seeing it while under the thumb of insomnia as I have several hours to go until I must get out of bed, dress, and await pickup for dialysis affords me a new and interesting perspective on it. Yes, it's ridiculously bloated at over four hours, but it's not as dull nor as camp as its infamy suggests or as I remembered it being. It's lavish to the point where the budget practically pours off of the screen, and that extravagance makes it a festival of eye candy. Sure, the dialogue is often stilted, but that was, and frankly still is, par for the course with Hollywood historical epics, and at least it has a huge cast of top-shelf actors to deliver it. With that taken into consideration, I don't buy Liz Taylor as the very Ptolemaic Cleopatra from a visual standpoint (translation: she does not work as an inbred ethnic Greek; way too white), but she wears the gorgeous costumes quite fetchingly and delivers the queen's unflappable arrogance as easy as breathing. (Perhaps expressing more than a little of her own personality.) 

Anyway, I do not find CLEOPATRA to be anywhere near as bad as contemporary reviews and most opinions of it popularly espouse. It's simply the last huge Hollywood epic of the classic era, bigger than most, but also no worse than many. If you ask me, its only real crime was being an exorbitant flop, and critics and the audience always love to dog pile on a loser when it's down. For me the bottom line is that it's saving my sanity during my latest bout of inability to sleep, and for that I am most grateful to it. 

That said, it's back to ancient times with Liz and Dick...

Friday, December 1, 2023

GODZILLA MINUS ONE (2023)

"We're gonna need a bigger boat..."
 
I've been on the go since waking this morning for dialysis, but I had to pop in briefly state that I thoroughly enjoyed GODZILLA MINUS ONE. I'm too wiped-out to write about it at length, but let it suffice to say that it's definitely one of the Top 3 that the franchise has to offer. 
 
It's the best of Godzilla films aimed at grownups, right alongside the somber 1954 original, as it's basically a drama about the last days of WWII and their aftermath for the Japanese, focusing on a deserter kamikaze pilot who encounters the pre-irradiated Godzilla and subsequently plunges into an ongoing state of PTSD and survivor's guilt. Returning to his bombed-out home, an orphaned girl with an orphaned infant (not her child) fallin with the pilot and the three form a makeshift family that does its best to survive. We follow them for two years and become quite invested in them, but then Godzilla, now mutated and rendered titanic by atomic radiation, returns...
 
It's all as serious as a heart attack and bears no trace of the signature goofiness of many of the series' entries. It's genuinely scary in parts, quite suspenseful, visually spectacular,and it featrures a Godzilla that's as mean and nasty as we have ever seen him. Here he's a complete and utter bastard, an implacable living holocaust that's just plain unstoppable. While entertaining as hell, there's no "fun" about any of the proceedings, as Godzilla's path of destruction is treated as the outright horror that it would be, were it to actually happen. The sequence where Godzilla razes Ginza is worth the price of admission, and it will have you on the edge of your seat.
 
If it's playing anywhere near you, do not miss this one on the big screen. HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION.
 

 
 Poster for the Japanese theatrical release.

Tuesday, October 31, 2023

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2023 - DAY 31: SUSPIRIA (2018)

Slaves to the rhythm.

Virginal American Mennonite Susie Bannion (Dakota Johnson) goes to West Berlin to study at the all-female Markos Dance Academy during the infamous "German Autumn" of 1977. (Look it up.) Upon arrival she finds the school in a state of turmoil due to student Patricia Hingle (Chloe Grace Moretz) vanishing after telling her psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor Dr. Josef Klemperer (Tilda Swinton in very convincing old man makeup), that the school is actually a coven for witches. Before she disappears, Patricia gives the psychiatrist her journals, which contain detailed information on the goings-on within the school/coven, including notes on the Three Mothers — Mater Tenebrarum, Mater Lachrymarum, and Mater Suspiriorum — three pre-Christian witches of immense power. When Patricia goes missing, the aged psychiatrist begins to investigate.

While settling in at the dance academy, Susie is immediately tasked with learning the choreography to a complex multi-person dance that the rest of the students have been rehearsing, and she proves so good that she is given the lead. But just before Susie's leap into the spotlight, Olga (Elena Fokina), a student, who was close with the missing Patricia, has a meltdown and curses out Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton again) and bolts to her room, where she prepares to leave the school. Madame Blanc carries on nonetheless, directing Susie to try the dance, and as Susie performs various severe movements, an isolated Olga is thrown bodily around an empty and mirrored studio room with each abrupt gesture by Susie, her body becoming more and more impossibly distorted and broken as the performance goes on. 

The horrific fate of Olga. 

When Susie is done, several of the school's matron's go to the still-breathing Olga, skewer her with handheld meathooks, and spirit her body away.

From there, as rehearsals intensify for an upcoming live performance of Madame Blanc's piece, entitled Volk, Susie becomes drawn into the coven and more of what's going on with the coven, its members, and their purpose is slowly revealed, with Susie right in the center of it all, and Dr. Klemperer getting more than he bargained for as he uncovers the dark truth. I would love to tell you more, but the rest of the film's surprises are best gone into cold...

Legendary director Dario Argento's 1977 SUSPIRIA is hailed by the majority of horror fanatics as one of the scariest pictures ever made and a landmark in Italian horror, but I have to go against the herd and proclaim it a load of overrated bollocks. It admittedly looks great and is quite eerie, I won't fault it for either of those aspects, but the film is a textbook example of style over narrative substance. The conceit of a German dance academy being a front for a coven is little more than a framework upon which Argento could hang assorted violent/gory set pieces, or an excuse for creative set design and lighting, as there really isn't a story to speak of. The 2018 version is another matter altogether, as director Luca Guadagnino takes the basic elements of Argento's vision and weaves them into a well-fleshed-out examination of several themes, including motherhood, death, loss, the dynamics between females, embracing female sexuality, the abuse of power, and Germany's awareness of its culpability for the Holocaust. Over the course of its lugubriously-paced 2.5 hour run time, we get to know and understand the characters and how real world events are reflected in the coven, and we learn what's up right along with them. 

In this era of endless remakes that seek to cash in on name recognition while rendering what was once adult content into a soft, safe, and sanitized PG-13 confection, it's nice to see a remake that has the balls to take chances and treat the audience like grownups. The script approaches its particulars with  the assumption that the viewer has had a good deal of life experience, as well a working knowledge of late-20th century world events (much of the current events cited in the story is not explained in full detail), and the lengthy run time allows everything room to breathe. And the embracing of the R-rating allows for multi-person nudity that makes perfect sense for the events depicted and is never gratuitous, and the story's gory and violent visuals are let loose with abandon and skillful realization.

I could go on and on but I'll just leave with a recommendation that when sitting down to watch SUSPIRIA 2018, it's a good idea to have had a nap beforehand, as its slow and quiet pace can act as a soporific. I suffer with insomnia, so I came to it quite tired and ended up nodding off a few times, which necessitated backing up to where I left off and starting again. The film is in no way boring, but it's easy to crash on if you're just plain exhausted.

And with that...  

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

 
Poster from the theatrical release.

Monday, October 30, 2023

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2023 - Day 30: John Carpenter's VAMPIRES (1998)

In New Mexico a team of hardened Vatican-sponsored vampire hunters led by Jack Crow (James Woods)  routs a nest of undead suckfaces, destroying nine of them with extreme prejudice. 

The team of Church-appointed vampire slayers receives a blessing before getting down to the business of wiping out undead suckfaces.

Not a bad day's work, but where is the master vampire? Seemingly nowhere to be found. But no big deal. The team celebrates their victory at a sleazy motel, surrounding themselves with whores and getting hammered. Too bad they didn't do a more thorough search of the acreage where the house serving as the vampires' nest was, because they they would have noticed the blatantly fresh grave only a couple hundred yards from the residence. 

At sundown the master vampire, Valek (Thomas Ian Griffith), claws his way out from the soil, and track the hunters to their place of revelry. In short order the master suckface mercilessly and gorily slays all but Crow, whom he calls out by name, and Crow and his righthand man, Montoya (Daniel Baldwin) barely manage to escape, dragging a bitten prostitute with them. Despite Montoya's protests, Crow knows that prostitute Katrina (Sheryl Lee) has 48 hours before she fully transitions to being a vampire, but as she chcnages she will become connected to the master, hearing what he hears and seeing what he sees, so the hunters can track the master through Katrina. And there's also the question of how the master knew Crow's name. Crow realizes that the hit on the vampires' nest was a setup because the master knew not to be present, so who marked the team for a massacre? After returning to the motel to stake, behead, and bury the dead and burn the place to the ground, and, with a young priest in tow (Tim Guinee), the proper hunt for Valek is on. But exactly who is this Valek, why is he so powerful, and what is he after?

Makin' with some stakin'.

Yer Bunche has been a John Carpenter fan since seeing the network television debut of HALLOWEEN back in 1979, and I have seen all of his films over the 44 years since. His films often bear a signature look, feel, and sound and, good or bad, they tend to entertain me with an experience akin to reading a comic book, but some comics books are masterpieces, others are just okay, and what remains are wastes of trees. VAMPIRES, though quite entertaining, a very much a flawed work that feels like Carpenter's heart just wasn't fully in it. The script is about 2/3 polished, but it falls apart significantly during the final act. The ending is one of carpenter's weakest, and by the start of the final reel I found myself checking my watch.

I first saw VAMPIRES when it came out, but that was during a period I consider my "lost years," when I went through life engaging in excessive drinking and weed-smoking, so I saw a lot of movies in states so wasted that I barely remember the details of a lot of those flicks. This was one I remember finding middling at best, so I hoped that in seeing it again I would experience a work whose merits I had mostly erased with my own drunken disconnect. But no, my initial impression was spot on, and what I got was pretty much a mid-level actioner that was like what I would have come up with in my backyard at age seven while enacting a story with my Adventure Team G.I. Joes and their mobile support vehicle, only with vampires. (Though I did not have any dolls that would have made for decent vampires. I did, however, have a Mego Supergirl that served as an all-purpose female character, so she would have been a good fit as Katrina.) The film doesn't bear the signature Carpenter look or feel, nor is the score as pronouncedly loaded with Carpenter's composition flavor. Among the roster of the director's works, VAMPIRES, while an okay way to pass just over ninety minutes, is a lesser work, and you miss little if you give it a miss. There are many much better vampire films to be seen, so go for something like Hammer's KISS OF THE VAMPIRE or TWINS OF EVIL.


Poster for the theatrical release.

Sunday, October 29, 2023

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2023 - Day 29: THE BABADOOK (2014)

If it's in a word, or it's in a look... You can't get rid of the Babadook.

Amelia Vanek (Essie Davis), a single mother in suburban Australia, struggles with raising her six-year-old son, Samuel (Noah Wiseman). The boy's father was killed in a car accident while driving in-labor Amelia to the hospital, so Amelia has held onto and not processed her grief over the entirety of her son's life. The boy is raised knowing that his father was killed on the day he was born, but all mention of the father is swiftly shut down by his mother. The pair pretty much live isolated within their house, with their most frequent social interactions being with Mrs. Roach (Barbara West), the kindly old lady next door, so their world is quite insular and sad. Samuel is an intelligent, creative kid who is learning elementary stage magic and build functioning weapons for home defense, but his behavior has become increasingly erratic and aggressive, some of which may have to do with him being on the spectrum, which leads to his mother withdrawing him from school. Caring for her difficult son while also juggling her job as a caretaker at a home for the elderly has left Amelia a wrung-out mess, both at work and at home. She has not slept for weeks, and catering to her son's constant needs wears her down to the point of her beginning to weary of motherhood. 

Part of their nightly ritual is Amelia reading the restless child a story to lull him to sleep at bedtime. One night, Samuel selects a book from the shelf that neither has seen before, a book entitled "Mr. Babadook," about a dark and scary monster that announces its presence by screaming "BA BA BA DOOK DOOK DOOK" and then terrorizing its victims. 

The book spooks the shit out of Samuel, who already had fears of monsters lurking beneath the bed and in his closet, but once the book is read, he begins to see the Babadook and yells at it to go away. Of course Amelia thinks it's just another element of her son's issues, but when scary and dangerous things begin to happen, Amelia and Samuel are confronted with the Babadook. But even with all of the experienced evidence, is the creature real, and if so, what is its motivation?  Or is Amelia, whose patience and nerves are beyond frayed, simply going mad?

It's nice to know that studios can still make intelligent horror films for grownups (though it should come as no surprise that a film of this nature was not made in the United States.) I steered clear of THE BABADOOK for years, because I often disagree with the opinions of those who gush over modern horror efforts seemingly indiscriminately, and also because it involved a kid, which is often a formula for trite and toothless scare-free shudders. That said, I'm not gonna lie when I tell you it's really heavy stuff.

When a harried mother can take no more. 

As the only child of  single mother whose nerves and patience were on a hair trigger, writer/director Jennifer Kent's examination of her story's two leads hit me like a sledgehammer to the guts. It's an intense, very emotional slow burn that perfectly communicates the fear of madness, from the POV of both mother and child, while making us care for the main characters. There are no cheap jump scares or gore, but what it brings instead is a mounting sense of tension and dread that held me riveted. During some of the mother's freakouts, I was transported right back to the fear I felt of my own mother during her manic, angry episodes. Essie Davis's performance as Amelia is utterly believable and natural, especially when losing control, and six-year-old Noah Wiseman gives the best performance by a child actor that I've seen in decades. At no point does he play Samuel as preternaturally precocious or cloying, instead enacting a confused and fragile child that we have all encountered at some point. Or a confused and fragile child that we ourselves were.

 In short, THE BABADOOK is an excellent film that I recommend to all who seek dark material that has more to offer than some dumb-as-dirt slasher movie or cookie cutter possession flick, but I will not be revisiting it. Sometimes art just hits too close to home.


Poster for the theatrical release.

Saturday, October 28, 2023

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2023 - Day 28: KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER "The Trevi Collection" (1975)

"Webster's definition of a coven is concise, terse, without the usual disclaimers or qualifications. It states simply that 'a coven is a band or assembly of witches.'"

While covering a garment union extortion racket, a string of suspicious maimings and deaths surrounding Trevi haute couture fashion collection for 1975 leads Independent News Service reporter Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin) down an investigative trail to direct confrontation with black witchcraft. As Kolchak, no stranger to sniffing out the supernatural, does the research, properly arms himself against old school maledictions, and gets closer to his target, the witch that he's after marks him as their next victim. But the question at the root of all of this is who's responsible, and what is their motivation?

The first thread in a diabolical web. 

As mentioned in previous years of 31 DAYS OF HORROR, KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER is part of the bedrock that turned me into a "monster kid" at a tender age. Though already addicted to horror movies, it was a delight to receive a weekly network teevee show that brought nine-year-old me stories of an ordinary man who found himself contending with the weird, the arcane, and the unnatural, and you can bet your ass that I never missed an episode while watching from the relative safety beneath our family room's coffee table.

I was drawn to Kolchak by virtue of his very ordinariness, coupled with his willingness to accept the impossible when directly faced with its complete and utter lethal reality. He was a Van Helsing for the late 20th century, an unlikely warrior against darkness whose vocation as a journalist gave him the patience, tenacity, and tools to do the work of figuring out the old ways to put a foot straight up the ass of the diabolical, and he never let his understandable terror spur him to flee. He always got the job done, often at great personal risk, and because of that he was my shabby hero.

Kolchak seeks answers from a coven.

I chose to spotlight "The Trevi Collection" because this year's roster of items needed a dose of Kolchak, as well as a bit more witchery, but also because in this era of endless reboots, reimaginings, and remakes, Kolchak is ripe for an update, provided the right cast, scripts, and directors were in place. "The Trevi Collection" would be a fun place to start, as witches on the left-hand path are among the most human of all supernatural menaces, so they are not as easily identifiable as, say, a stitched-together abomination like Frankenstein's creature, or a full-on werewolf, or even a triffid. They are the evil that lurks hidden among us, and once they strike, it's usually horrific and too late. Their unholy endeavors can take on a myriad of dire forms, so the story potential is limitless, constrained only by the imagination of the writer and by what the censors will allow. And since witches usually bear the aspect of an ordinary person, there's little or no need for expensive prosthetics or CGI for their appearance, and studios love being able to turn out a work that won't bankrupt them. Especially if there's likely a colossal box office return on a relatively low budget. In this case, picture Kolchak in an R-rated version of this story, complete with all the tropes of classic black magic narratives. Bloody sacrifices, nudity, and general disturbing weirdness and actions that would never fly on TV or with a PG-13 rating. Now, that I want to see, but unless that quality reboot happens, I will just have to be satisfied with the legacy of a weekly spookshow that's just a year shy of being a half-century old.

Bottom line: If you have never availed yourself to KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER, you owe it to yourself to check it out. In many ways there would never have been THE X-FILES if not for this series that predated it by two decades. There's good reason for KOLCHAK to be remembered and revered today, so stock up on crucifixes, holy water, and garlic (among other items) and join one fleabag reporter's ongoing battle against that which should not be.

Carl Kolchak: un-deterrable reporter and ass-kicker of the fantastic.