Take Staudingerstraße to Langackerwerg. Weiter rechts gehen. Follow the river to the house that witchcraft built. Meander it’s deco halls, it’s swaths of Technicolor. Count the footsteps in the night, past the hall of maggots, the Olympic swimming pool, the den of razor wire. Past the long mirrored rehearsal studios, the maid’s quarters. Peel back the curtain and breathe in the decay that is death transforming itself to life. The sleep apnea of the witch.
Western Europe
The Lobster
Dad bod Farrell by tooth, by claw. There’s a lot of talk of stabbing stomachs at the Last Chance Hotel. Verdant bracken, the bay laps the shore. Feral singles in the turgid wood. A brutal film, richly imagined. John C. Reilly would like to be a macaw when the torture’s over.
D & W by: Yorgos Lanthimos; More W: Efthimis Filippou; P by: Thimios Bakatakis; E by: Yorgos Mavropsaridis; w/Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Léa Seydoux, Angeliki Papoulia, Ariane Lebed, Olivia Colman, John C. Reilly, Michael Smiley, etc…119 min, Ireland, 2016
My Mother’s Castle
A picture like a walk on a breezy, sunny day. Submissive, girl-crazy, young boy, early 20th century, French country summer. Bittersweet memories, the ghost of your childhood. A family uses a secret key to shortcut through the canals in the backyards of Marseilles’ wealthy elites. Most everyone is full of love and help but there are a few dickheads (just like life). Pages turn to dust, families turn to death. World War 1 looms, casts a shadow. Novelists cast a spell. This movie is a spell. This movie is sweet, sunny insects buzzing and river water lapping in concrete sluice.
D & W: Yves Robert, More W: Marcel Pagnol & Jérôme Tonnerre, P by: Robert Alazraki, E by: Pierre Gillette, M by: Vladimir Cosma, w/Nathalie Roussel, Phillippe Caubère, Julian Ciamanca, Phillipe Uchan, Didier Paine, Thérèse Liotard, Julie Timmerman, jean Rochefort, etc…98 min, France, 1991
Two Days, One Night
Smoky tendrils of gaseous white depression, leaking from the furnace she left fallow all fall, punctuated by sudden bursts of joyous AM/FM radio. A woman travels by bus and foot and ride to the doors of her co-workers and asks them to take a pay-cut so she isn’t fired. This is a great movie to discuss with bros around the proverbial water cooler. It inspires questions like, “How can we take care of each other better?” and, “What ain’t working?” Namaste you guys, I love you.
D & W by: Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne, P by: Alain Marcoen, E by: Marie-Hélène Dozo, w/Marion Cotillard, Fabrizio Rongione, Christelle Comil, Hicham Slaoui, Catherine Salée, Alain Eloy, Timur Magomedgadzhiev, Batiste Sornin, etc…, 95 min, Belgium, 2014
In Bruges
Gothic canals, f bombs and child murder. It’s not so much In Bruges is milk that’s coddled and gone lumpy from neglect as I’m no longer in my twenties. Should do well for all you Boondock Saints but my fellow depressive neurotics should steer clear. Belgium looks nice though.