Three Films Make A Post: In the darkest hour, there is a light that shines on every human being...but ONE!

Rottentail (2018): As if anyone needed another example that going for the Instant Cult Movie thing is a very bad idea, here comes director Brian Skiba’s idiotic tale (apparently based on a graphic novel, for which I’ll just take the movie’s word) of a scientist (Corin Nemec at a career low) who turns into a human-rabbit monster thing after an unfortunate incident involving a genetically modified killer rabbit and an experimental fertility treatment. From then on out, it’s shrill acting, unfunny on purpose “funny” lines (because actual jokes are too hard, I can’t help but assume), hideous special effects, direction exclusively consisting of annoying tics, and winking at the camera non-stop, with nothing that suggests the point from where actual cult movies start: the wish to make an actual movie.

Darkman (1990): The film that looks now a bit like Sam Raimi’s weird dry-run for making his Spider-Man movies on the other hand, is an actual cult film, made by people who obviously care about the art of filmmaking even in the film’s strangest moments – perhaps even most then – with grace, style, cleverness and an actual sense of humour. Typical of Raimi at the time, the film’s a rollercoaster with at least one fun/clever/wonderful/crazy idea jumping onto the screen every thirty seconds, but also with enough of a heart and a brain to keep the tale about what amounts to the Phantom of the Opera as a superhero film just barely under control. Watching it for the twentieth time or so, I still had the feeling of seeing a film that just might go completely off the rails any second now, but never does, instead leaving me happily grinning for much of its running time, when not gasping at Liam Neeson’s huge hands (well, or his wondrous ability to play his role just as straight as it can be played) or Larry Drake’s gorgeous mugging.


Thelma (2017): Completely different in style and tone, but also rather wonderful, is Joachim Trier’s meticulous film about the kind of teenage lesbian awakening that includes psychokinetic powers that start with Carrie but end in the freedom of positive and hard-earned wish fulfilment. It’s filmed with a sense of poetry, of terror and at some points of an awe that raises this far above many a film that uses the supernatural as metaphor, and played by Eili Harboe with immense emotional weight and subtlety. All of this puts it far beyond the modernized re-tread of Carrie it at first threatens to be; it also should convince every feeling viewer that its happy end is perfectly deserved and proper for what came before it. Depending on one’s interpretation of what happened before, one might not even want to treat the happy end as one, but the film’s perfectly fine with not only portraying the suffering and crisis of becoming herself of a young woman but also daring to say that things might actually get better for her.

In short: The Gift (2000)

As a widow with three kids somewhere in the rural South of the USA, Annie Wilson (Cate Blanchett) doesn’t have a particularly easy life. She’s earning a living as a clairvoyant, though in her particular case, this means she is a combination of amateur social worker and amateur psychologist, helping people in her community who’d never seek or find professional help with kindness and empathy as best as she can. There’s for example Valerie Barksdale (Hilary Swank) who is regularly abused by her prick of a husband Donnie (Keanu Reeves), despite Annie telling her again and again she should pack up and leave; or the local car mechanic Buddy (Giovanni Ribisi), whom she is trying to help confront some deeply buried trauma that is breaking him apart inside.

Annie does have actual psychic powers, mind you. Dreams and visions do tend to tell her things, and right now, those visions are telling her there’s trouble on the horizon, though it’s unclear what kind of trouble it is. The only thing that’s sure is that it’s going to be bad.

Say what you will against Sam Raimi (we all have suffered through that thing with Kevin Costner, and various odious comic relief outings by his brother Ted, after all), but the man has always been more than just a one-trick pony, by now showing a filmography that manages to be diverse in tone and style yet still showing a consistent world view and a personal touch.

So, it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that his Southern - mildly gothic and supernatural - thriller The Gift shows a filmmaker who is just as accomplished at making a character-focused film without any big set-pieces or much blood as he is when concerning himself with Bruce Campbell’s blood-spattering adventures or Spider-Man.

While its plot about guilt, murder, and ghosts isn’t terribly original – these things are what we expect in the South to happen right? - The Gift thrives on two things. Firstly, it carries a deep sense of place, turning what could be cliché South into something that lives and breathes like an actual place (from my chair in Germany I wouldn’t dare suggest an authentic depiction of the South, mind you), built up by Raimi through often surprisingly subtle framing choices and a direction style that always emphasises the bits of scenery that tell us about the place they belong to without the film ever actually pointing it out.

Secondly, there’s the acting ensemble. It’ll come as no surprise that Blanchett is pretty damn great, turning a character that could be your usual caricature medium right out of a mediocre TV show into a believable woman - in turns fragile, strong, sad, and nearly painfully compassionate without ever feeling like a sugary saint. On the other hand, it’s difficult not to be a little bit shocked by seeing Keanu Reeves do that thing I never thought he could do: act, and quite convincingly thanks to the magic casting someone against type can produce.

All of which leaves us with a calmly accomplished film that is unspectacular only in theory but in practice can knock off a pair of socks or two.

3 Films Make A Post: The Final Chapter

Drag Me To Hell (2009): Sam Raimi's return BOO! to the comedic horror genre has its moments, BOO! predictably either when the film is getting surreal or when it BOO! nearly becomes a social satire about BOO! class. Alas, too much of the film consists of SOMEONE SCREAMING "BOO" INTO YOUR FACE VERY LOUDLY, which I found annoying more often than not. Also not very amusing is the bleedingly obvious final twist, I can only explain through a) rampant stupidity on Raimi's side or b) Raimi thinking his audience consists only of mouthbreathing idiots.

Of course, horror films in carnival ride mode are far from my favorite part of the genre, so my barely serviceable movie might be someone else's new favorite one.

 

XX: Beautiful Beast (1995): This first of the XX movies is of less interest than some of its successors, despite being directed by Toshiharu Ikeda of Evil Dead Trap fame. The story of Ran (Kaori Shimamura), known as the Black Orchid, a professional killer taking vengeance for the murder of her sister and falling for an ex-yakuza barkeep who is of course connected to the men she is trying to kill, just doesn't have much to keep one's interest. It's nice to look at, but so generically bland in every other aspect that I had a difficult time staying awake while watching it.

 

Giallo (2009): As one of the chosen few (of possibly very dubious taste) who did, well, like Argento's Mother of Tears quite unironically, I was looking forward to this one. I shouldn't have. Giallo is so boring, cliched, repetitive and just plain stupid that I wouldn't even call it an unconscious self-parody of Argento. Self-parodists just misuse their stylistic vocabulary; Argento seems to have lost his completely and replaced it with psycho thriller 101 stuff even more generic than the film's title.

It's worse than The Card Player.

 

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