Three Films Make A Post: Will you win, Godzilla? Will you win, Kong? The battle of the century!

Copycat (1995): There are two reasons why Jon Amiel’s serial killer thriller is anything more than a slick adaptation of an overconstructed script. And since these reasons are called Sigourney Weaver and Holly Hunter, and both are in their fullest screen presence modes, this silly concoction about a serial killer who is basically a serial killer cover band turns into a tour de force commanded by two actresses who drag every bit of possible substance out of very little. This sort of thing can absolutely elevate mediocrity into a greatly entertaining movie, as the film thoroughly proves.

Malasaña 32 (2020): Some of the set pieces in Alberto Pintó’s movie about a Spanish family in the 70s moving from the country into what turns out to be a haunted apartment are very well done and effective. However, this is the type of horror movie that can only ever treat and see its supernatural threat as a reason for set pieces and plot twists, and never manages to cohere the political troubles of the time it suggests, the family’s experience moving from the country to the city in hopes of a better life, and the backstory of the supernatural threat into any kind of thematically coherent argument.

The horror pieces themselves tend to the grab-bag approach where thematic coherence or coherence of mood never appear to be of interest to the filmmakers, either. All the easier to borrow heavily from all kinds of sources, be it Poltergeist – a much superior film – or creepypasta.

Embrace of the Serpent aka El abrazo de la serpiente (2023): There’s a certain kinship between Ciro Guerra’s film and Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, Cobra Verde and Fitzcarraldo in the way naturalism and sudden outbreaks of the surreal intertwine, as well as in its location.

However, this is a film made by someone from a very different time and place, so there are as many differences in approaches and world view as there are similarities – Guerra certainly isn’t a Herzog cover band. The film’s treatment of colonialism, Western scientific and Amazonian traditional culture comes from a very different direction, but Guerra generally doesn’t simplify and keeps certain differences unresolved, philosophical questions answered from two opposing directions at once.

As a film this is an act of deep worldbuilding, making ways of looking at and being in the world understandable by slowly drawing a viewer into them, full immersion in a style only a handful of directors use these days (Robert Eggers comes to mind).

Three Films Make A Post: We'll do it every year..until we get it right

Home for the Holidays (1995): It’s a bit of a shame that Jodie Foster has been doing only a little direction work in her career, for she’s a rather great director, in the unassuming way that treats the job of a director as mainly concerned with helping a script and the actors bringing it to life breathe; there’s really no vanity in her direction here but a lot of focus. The ensemble cast – led by a typically wonderful Holly Hunter – clearly thanks her for it, going through family relations painful, loving, complicated and darkly funny with the same focus. One might say that a film about a holiday bringing together a disparate bourgeois family and letting the cracks show isn’t exactly news (and wasn’t in 1995 either), but Foster is excellent at turning the commonplace and unspecific concept of “bourgeois family” into something very specific. And you know what they say about unhappy families.

The She Beast (1966): This first of three full features in the tragically short career of director Michael Reeves is a bit of a mess, clearly having difficulties deciding if it is a comedy, a gothic horror film, some kind of satire, or a mixture of all of these things. Seen separately, any given scene – particularly those indebted to Italian gothic horror - shows Reeves’s talent, but they never truly cohere into a full film. There are also some peculiar decisions: why hide Barbara Steele, who is basically playing the same kind of role she did in a lot of Italian gothic horror films, under a conceptually creepy but actually pretty crappy looking mask when her possession is really taking hold, when her body of work already shows that she doesn’t have need of this sort of thing? Is the fearless vampire hunter supposed to be a rip-off of Polanski’s film? What is it with witch possession and lakes?


My Neighbour Totoro (1988): This is one of the younger skewing Miyazaki Ghibli films with a couple more moments that seem more childish than childlike than in most of Miyazaki’s work. However, apart from looking pretty damn beautiful, this also features some of the most beautiful depictions of childlike wonder I’ve ever encountered, as well as a deft portrayal of children as actual children. And as with all things Miyazaki, there’s also a knowledge of the sad realities of life in the film. Not one that ever overwhelms it, its wonder, or its child protagonists, but one that very well knows that everything’s eventual, yet beautiful and important because of that. Plus, there’s the cat bus, and how can anyone not love a movie containing that?

Three Films Make A Post: Seduction. Submission. Murder. Tonight . . . evil goes over the edge

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005): Despite being a friend of the darker kinds of humour, I often find myself nonplussed with comedies when they become too cynical, or rather, when they seem to dislike their own characters so much they can’t seem to find any shared emotional ground with them. Consequently, I have a complicated relationship with Shane Black’s stuff as a writer as well as a director. Here, at the start of the man’s career in the latter role, I find myself rather taken with what he produces. While the characters are certainly not all around loveable, Black doesn’t only wallow in their misfortunes, and his tendency to fourth wall breaking and ironic distance is very controlled and indeed responsible for many of the film’s funniest scenes. It’s also remarkable how good Black here is at scenes that are at once playing with genre conventions in funny ways and actually highly effective expressions of genre.

Add to that charming performances by Robert Downey Jr., Michelle Monaghan and Val Kilmer, and a lovingly absurd mystery plot kinda-sorta based on a Brett Halliday story, and you’ll find me with very uncomplicated feelings towards this particular Shane Black film.

The Big Sick (2017): Staying with comedies for a bit, Michael Showalter’s film based on a script by Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon that’s based on their own early relationship, with Nanjiani playing himself and eternal indie romance heroine Zoe Kazan as Emily should by all rights be a mess of a film, or a terrible tear-jerker. As a matter of fact, it is anything but, and rather ends up being a highly successful quirky romantic comedy where that “quirky” isn’t code for “too twee”, a film about the specific problems of the children of immigrants, a sometimes drama about family, and a film that may on paper sound like a bit of an ego trip but that’s very much about people not called Kumail Nanjiani too, showing every character as complex and complicated trying to manoeuvre through the messes of life, love and so on.

It’s a fantastic film. The script is funny and moving and clever and so well plotted it feels completely natural, the acting (with people like Holly Hunter and Anupam Kher giving support) is great, and Showalter’s direction is all brilliant pacing and timing, so much so you might forget it’s there – which is an art to achieve.


The Guard (2011): And while I’m at it, why not finish up on another comedy, this time around John Michael McDonagh’s very Irish homage to buddy cop movies – or is it his answer to 80s action movies as a whole? Anyway, the film’s a showcase for the copious talents of Brendan Gleeson, Don Cheadle and others, and feels like a bit of an ode to the virtues that might be hidden under very dubious surfaces, with some excursions into actual tragedy (the scenes between Gleeson’s character Gerry Boyle and his dying mother played by Fionnula Flannagan are absolutely heart-breaking; also funny), realpolitik, and the sad fact that in some places, the abrasive, politically un-correct man of dubious morals in little things might just be the only moral guy in big things around.

Three Films Make A Post: Fear takes a road trip.

Broadcast News (1987): They sure don’t make romantic comedies like James L. Brooks’s film anymore, though I’m not sure they ever did make many romantic comedies with endings this sober-minded yet un-cynical that also worked just as well as media satires (in this case like Network if it were an actual film with characters instead of a very long self-satisfied rant). Add to that sharp and deep acting performances by Holly Hunter, William Hurt and Albert Brooks, dialogue that’s cutting and funny and wise and absurd all at the same time, direction that does a lot of thematic and emotional work without ever pointing to its own class, and you’ll be as confused as I am that this thing was actually once nominated for seven Oscars (but didn’t win any, don’t you worry).

Cave (2016): Another point to add to my list of “things movies taught me”: going on an illegal cave diving expedition isn’t such a swell idea if you are the members of a love triangle. Apart from bringing me that helpful insight, Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken’s cave-bound thriller looks slick and contains one and a half truly creepy scenes but lacks the psychological depth in its characters to be a proper character-based thriller, as well as the tight control a film like this needs to be truly suspenseful. It’s competent and not particularly clever, yet still would be a film I’d recommend for a bored afternoon or so, but the rest of my goodwill for the whole affair got eaten up by its ending. For after not even eighty minutes of plot, the narrative just stops on a cliffhanger (not a proper open ending, mind you) with titles informing us the sequel is going to be in cinemas soon, adding insult to injury and making quite sure I’m not going to waste my time on said sequel.


The Axe Murders of Villisca (2016): Taking place in the house where a bunch of historical axe murders happened, this indie production directed by Tony E. Valenzuela turned out to be rather better than the teenagers versus ghosts flick I expected it to be. The characters are somewhat more interesting than usual in this sort of thing (and well acted to boot), the script knows where it wants to be and how to get there, and the photography is often effectively moody. The film doesn’t quite manage to hold the tension it has built up throughout its final act but I enjoyed my time with it quite a bit. And unlike Cave, it has an actual ending.