Did You Know I'm Utterly Insane

Luca! Have I not supported you? Have I not praised you far and wide? Well I don't know what I have done to make Luca Guadagnino unhappy and spiteful but I feel personally attacked twice in a row now with this American Psycho remake that he's planning on making -- first with the fact that he's doing it at all since Mary Harron's 2000 film with Christian Bale is literally perfect; one of my favorite movies, period. And now comes the word (thx Mac) that he's getting one of my least favorite It Boys of the moment Austin Butler to star in it? Luca, baby, why? I've found almost everything Butler has done in the past several years of making a name for himself to be phony and try-hard -- no matter the praise they received his Elvis and his turn in Dune Part Two were both flops as far as I'm concerned. Flops! Credit where credit's due -- he was fine playing a pretty boy poseur in The Bikeriders and I liked how Quentin Tarantino used him as a blowhard in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood...

... but I'd say it's his Dune work that landed him this gig and I have no idea what anyone sees in that performance. I find it laughable. I re-watched the movie last week and I still find it laughable. He has no presence in it -- he's the least scary villain since Jared Leto dyed his hair green. I will admit that there's something to be said here about Luca casting someone who reads as a total void to me as Patrick Bateman, the ultimate void. Lord knows I owe Mr. Guadagnino the benefit of the doubt at this point! His remake of Suspiria -- another film that never should have worked but managed to become one of my favorite horror films of all time -- proved my anti-remake mindset before that to be mostly foolish. But going into that I loved all oif the actors he'd hired, and that is just not going to be the case with this if this ends up happening. When I posted the remake's announcement in October I just figured this'd go onto the director's extensive never-happening heap of projects, but this casting news makes it seem like it is really happening. Granted Ellis' book and Harron's movie are very different, and having a gay man approach the material will probably give it a different hook. Also there is the real-world angle of our political reality to mine -- the poison of the 1980s New York Finance Bro misogyny mind-set which has had some, you know, consequences. I don't know. I don't know, dammit! Why can't Luca just be nice to me?

Luca Guadagnino's American Psycho Wait What

I fully changed my attitude toward "remakes" thanks to Luca Guadagnino's 2018 master-class on how to do them right called Suspiria -- I've always been a big fan of Dario Argento's original and I thought a remake was a terrible idea, and then Luca's version came out and he slapped my fucking mouth shut to the point where I now refuse to baldly criticize them on first glance. If an artist is willing to do something as different and interesting with the material as he did there, then by all means let the remakes happen! 

And yet! Luca himself has come to test me today! Because Deadline is reporting that Luca himself is working on remaking one of my absolute favorite movies of all time, one I love way more than I ever loved the original Suspiria -- specifically he's thinking about making a new adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' novel American Psycho, which I am sure you are all aware Mary Harron turned into a horror comedy masterpiece in the year 2000 with Christian Bale. For god's sake I just posted a gif from that movie less than 24 hours ago!

The thing is -- American Psycho the film works so well exactly because of who made the thing. The team of Mary Harron and screenwriter Guinevere Turner gutted the book's POV and made the character of Patrick Bateman into a much deserved punchline. It's much more of a comedy than it is a horror film, althought the terror of toxic masculinity is very real and felt palpably throughout. 

And I have no doubt that Luca gets all of that -- Steven Soderbergh's favorite screenwriter Scott Z. Burns, who Deadline says is working on the new script, I'm far more dubious about. Which isn't to say I haven't liked many of Burns' scripts -- he wrote The Informant! for god's sake. But perspective is everything, especially with material this questionable, and it'd be very very very easy to slide off the mark with this. It's honestly a miracle that Harron's movie got made and ended up the way it did -- one I wonder at anew every time I think about the movie. Which is quite often here 20+ years on!

And I say all of this with Luca's new film Queer very much at the front of my brain -- I reviewed that yesterday and it's as good as anything Luca has ever made. The man is killing it right now. I should not doubt in Luca. He's proven that time and time again. And the man can direct some horror! And I should also keep in mind that Luca attaches his name to a thousand projects that never get made, so maybe this will go the way of his Brideshead Revisited or his Lord of the Flies movies. Or maybe he'll make a movie of the musical! I love the American Psycho musical!

I am just... listen, in the Deadline article the head of Lionsgate is quoted saying they're thrilled to have a filmmaker like Luca coming on board this "potent and classic IP" and I know that quoite isn't Luca's fault and he would never put it that way but that dude needs to read the room. "Classic IP" rings all of the alarm bells of terror. So..... thoughts???? Help me out here, people. I am bewildered. 

I Double Dario You

The documentary Dario Argento Panico is out on Shudder today -- it is, in case the title didn't give it away, about the director Dario Argento. He's the maestro behind such movies as Suspiria, Inferno, Deep Red, and Thomas Kretschmann turning into a gigantic grasshopper. Bravo, Signore Argento. Bravo.  Anyway here is the trailer for the doc if you missed it -- I watched the doc last night and if you're a fan it's pretty much indispensable. The best stuff in it is all the stuff about his relationship with his daughter Asia -- their working relationship and their personal relationship and how the former benefitted the latter. It's surprisingly lovely? I had an inkling that Dario might actually be an alright dude (and not the perverted lunatic his movies imply) after watching his deeply empathetic performance in Gaspar Noé's movie Vortex a couple of years ago (and if you've never seen Vortex I highly recommend it) but this doc kind of solidifies that impression. He seems in the school of Wes Craven -- a solid guy who got all his freaky shit out on the screen, the way art was intended. How sweet!

Two Trailers of Sheer Terror!

My head's been all over the place today -- blame those Jeremy Allen White underwear pictures that exploded off my screen like fireworks when I first turned on my computer this morning -- and so I haven't gotten to a couple of important things worth sharing yet. So let's do it rat-a-tat style, a fast drop of too much information and then whoosh I'm gone again like I was never here. First up! There is a docuemtnary about horror master Dario Argento hitting Shudder on February 2nd! (It's coinciding with a screening series here in NYC at the IFC Center.) Titled Dario Argento Panico and from filmmaker Simone Scafidi the doc features interviews with people like Gaspar Noé, Guillermo Del Toro, and Nicolas Winding Refn, aka the hottest nerd-fest in town. Also a bunch of his actors and Mr. Argento himself. Here's the trailer!

Next up we got the full trailer for Diablo Cody's next horror film called Lisa Frankenstein -- I shared the teaser all the way back in October; watch that here if you're like me and don't want too much given away. Which means that no, I haven't watched this full trailer myself. But I have heard good stuff about this movie from people who've already seen it, and I love love loved that teaser, so I don't need to. Maybe you're not me, who knows! Anyway Lisa Frankenstein hits theaters on February 9th, and here's that trailer:

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Suspiria (2018)

Sara: You're making some kind of deal with them. 

Susie: I don't know what you're talking about. 

Sara: The matrons. 

Susie: Whatever you have in your head,

Sara, nothing is wrong.

Sara: How can you know what 

they'll ask of you in return? 

Susie: Nothing's wrong. 

Sara: You just haven't seen the bill yet.

A happy coincidence today in that it is the 30th birthday of the great Mia Goth while tomorrow is the 5th anniversary of the release of Luca Guadagnino's masterul Suspiria remake!  Mia has gone on to become a horror icon in those five years thanks to her turns in Ti West's films X and Pearl (with a side helping of Inifinity Pool) but those of us in the know could see that she swanned away with her every scene in Suspiria -- and I say that as no insult to the people she was sharing scenes with obviously, since I'm of the mind that Dakota Johnson and Tilda "Tilda" Swinton were mad genius in the movie. But whenever Mia shows up you are watching Mia... 

... and Mia alone. Anyway I think most people have come around to this being one of the great horror remakes, right? I might even say that it's the finest example of taking a known property and doing something totally fresh and weird and new with it -- the other great horror remakes like the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and John Carpenter's The Thing are all pretty close to the movies they're remaking. But Luca's Suspiria feels incredibly different from Argento's, not just in its muted colorscape but also in tone and purpose. It's a political screed, for god's sake! One that only got timelier as the years passed. "It's all a mess. The one out there. The one in here. The one that's coming. Why is everyone so ready to think the worst is over?” Indeed.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Phantom of the Paradise (1974)

Phoenix: Our love is an old love, baby, it's older than all our years. I have seen in strange young eyes, familiar tears. We're old souls in a new life, baby. They gave us a new life to live and learn. Some time to touch old friends and still return. Our paths have crossed and parted, this love affair was started long, long ago. This love survives the ages, in it story lives are pages. Fill them up, may ours turn slow. Our love is a strong love, baby, we give it all and still receive. And so with empty arms, we must still believe. All souls last forever so we need never fear goodbye. A kiss when I must go... no tears... in time... we kiss hello.

Happy 74 to the legend Jessica Harper! Sussssspiria forever! And both flavors, obviously. I hope she keeps popping up in Luca Guadagnino's movies -- as with everything regarding Bones & All her small role should've gotten way more attention:

Thursday's Ways Not To Die

Trauma (1993)

It is in scenes like this where you can really see how legitimately skilled Argento can be when he wants to be, beneath all the incoherent nonsense he always heaps upon his movies. This scene is fantastically shot and edited, with the slow build-up of Brad Dourif's body being dragged to the elevator shaft and then the elevator slowly slowly slowly descending and then all hell breaking lose. Really fine uses and manipulations of perspective, and all of the visual Vertigo riffs are fun. And that shot of the key Dourif is holding in his hand being sliced in half by the elevator obviously makes no logical sense -- pretty sure the force of the elevator would pull it out of his hand and not slice the metal key in half like butter! -- but as a stand-in for not having the money or technology to show us the head being severed from the body it does the trick. 

Anyway sometimes I will email myself a few words about a death scene when I see one in a movie that would make for a good one of these posts. And just as often I completely forget that I did that until months and months later. Today, trying to think up a "Ways Not To Die" for us, a cursory search through my email showed me a message from myself in 2021 that said, "the scene where Brad Dourif gets decapitated by an elevator in Dario Argento's Trauma." This tells me that I have seen this movie! But I have zero recollection of it here, just two years later. This scene, as I watched it on Tubi just now, did ring some alarm bells -- specifically those insane shots of Dourif's head flying down the shaft -- if my brain is so riddled with holes that it could forget those ridiculous frames of film then I should toss in the towel completely. 

Anyway here is how Vinegar Syndrome (who released the blu-ray of this movie that I know I own!) describe this movie, which escapes me completely:

"Aura is a young Romanian who, while on the run from her parents, is rescued by journalist and recovering drug addict, David Parsons. After being returned to her home, Aura’s parents are murdered by a vicious serial killer known as The Headhunter, sending Aura back on the run, to David. With no one to turn to for help, the unlikely pair launch their own investigation into the killings, discovering shocking and long hidden revelations that connect the continuing murders ever closer to Aura and a terrifying secret from her past...

The first US lensed film from the master of Italian horror, Dario Argento (Suspiria, Opera), TRAUMA was his return to classical form giallo filmmaking, offering a twist filled, labyrinthine plot, brutal and creative murders, stunning scope cinematography, and a haunting score by Pino Donaggio (Piranha). Headlined by an all-star cast including three-time Oscar nominee Piper Laurie (Carrie), Oscar nominees Frederic Forrest (Apocalypse Now) and Brad Dourif (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), acclaimed actor James Russo (Django Unchained), and actress and director Asia Argento (The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things) in her first starring role." 

More than anything I just can't believe I have no memory of a Piper Laurie performance in a Dario Argento movie!! I would say I must have been really high when I watched this but I don't get high, so I don't know. Shrug emoji. Argento movies can sometimes be slippery little suckers, which is my nice way of saying "fantastically forgettable." Have we got any defenders of this movie up in here? Since I forgot the damn thing and I own the damn thing I suppose I should just watch it again. So while I try to sort out my stupid brain (a lifetime task) y'all can hit the jump for links to all of the previous "Ways Not To Die"...

Four Flies on Isabelle Huppert

Okay first things first where has that photo of Isabelle Huppert wearing a Jaws tank-top been my entire life??? I want to make myself a t-shirt that has that photo on it, that is how much I love that. Second things second -- have y'all heard the news that Huppert is supposedly going to star in Dario Argento's next movie? That's according to Dario, who said so at the Stiges Film Fest where they're screening his latest giallo film Dark Glasses -- I briefly reviewed DG at Fantasia in August, read my thoughts right here. It's a little goofy but it's by far Argento's best film in literal decades, so this news about Huppert hits me in a mood more inclined to believe this could be incredible than I might have before when he'd only had a steady string of hard flops behind him. Not that Huppert is capable of being anything but fascinating on-screen -- even in bad movies she's always riveting. But let's hope this one (which we have no information on yet) works! That would be nice for Argento, it'd be nice for Huppert, and it would be nice for me personally, which is the most important factor of all. Anyway in related news Dark Glasses is playing a few theaters right now (including the IFC Center here in NYC) and it's hitting Shudder this Thursday -- here's the trailer: 

Quote of the Day

"With Bones and All, I wasn’t interested at all in the shock value, which I hate. I was interested in these people. I understood their moral struggle very deeply. I understood what was happening to them. I am not there to judge anybody. You can make a movie about cannibals if you’re there in the struggle with them, and you’re not codifying cannibalism as a topic or a tool for horror. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is not a horror movie. It’s a devastating portrait of America from a very unreconciled master filmmaker. Even the second one, which I love as well, isn’t a horror movie; it’s a satire of Ronald Regan. The Exorcist is a family drama, not a horror movie. It’s about motherhood, and what is alien about that? 

The horror movie as a genre is less interesting because it does play with the various limited set of rules, and the repetition of those rules can be funny and amusing if you want a mindless day with the popcorn at the movie theater watching Final Destination. Or, it can be an empowering experience, or that of a great intellectual who is reflecting on those codes, like Kubrick with The Shining. But mostly it’s just repetition. It’s like comfort food. Except comfort food is the food that makes you sick after you eat it because while it tastes fine at the beginning, it’s also heavy and processed. 

 I’m saying all this as a great horror movie fan, and, because of Suspiria and partially because of this movie, a director in the camp. I think I’ll keep doing horror movies in my life, even if Bones and All isn’t a horror movie per se."

That is Luca Guadagnino talking about Horror Movies and his forthcoming cannibal romance Bones and All with Deadline, read it all here. It's a good-sized long chat and there is maybe a little bit more plot and theme-wise with regards to the new film than I'd have liked to have known, so be aware going in if you're concerned about that. Still I could listen to Luca talk about anything for ages even when I disagree with him, and I'm not sure I entirely agree with him in the above quote -- I get what he's getting at, saying The Exorcist is really a family drama and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a brutal satire of America but they are also very much Horror Films! I loathe the implication that labeling something "Horror Film" is somehow limiting. Which I don't entirely think is his intent -- he seems to have a definition of Horror Movie that's very precise in what "Horror" means. (Specifically that his intention with "cannibalism" here in this film isn't to horrify, but to metaphor.) But I'm all for opening it up, not closing it down. Anyway it's a good chat, check it. And here is the Bones and All teaser if you missed it.

Fantasia 2022: Dark Glasses in 250 Words or Less

Listen. Dario Argento is a legend, an icon. He's 82 years young and he's got a dozen classic horror movies under his belt. And in the past year the man just gave a fine, understatedly moving performance in Gaspar Noe's Vortex. He doesn't need to do anything else to cement his legacy... and when it's come to directing movies over the past two or so decades I usually find myself wishing that he wouldn't! But I'm glad he made Dark Glasses, his latest very-much-him spin on the giallo that just screened at Fantasia, because it's weird and it's goofy and it's funny and it's stylish and it's got a great soundtrack and I actually enjoyed it? more than I've enjoyed any of his movies since 1996 with The Stendhal Syndrome I suppose, and 90% of my enjoyment of Stendhal is just Thomas Kretschmann playing a stupidly sexy creep. Dark Glasses has those oddball dream-logic flourishes that only Argento could come up with, and while its mystery isn't all that interesting the way he inexplicably goes about telling it is. Is his leading lady too much of a mannequin cartoon person to take seriously for a single second? For sure. But for that scene with the snakes alone I will forever think of this movie fondly.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (1970)

Sam: Why did you wall up your house?

Berto: To keep out the busybodies!

Born eighty-six years ago today was the actor Tony Musante, best know for playing the lead in Dario Argento's debut picture -- I wish I'd gotten the chance to see this one's brand new 4K remaster when they screened it at FLC here in NYC last week as part of their Dario Argento retrospective since this is one of Argento's most visually arresting films and I don't just (just) mean Musante in those tight 1970s trousers. Its big murder-scene set-piece at the art gallery really is one for the record books. 

Probably Musante's other best regarded role is as one of the thugs in the 1967 NYC terror flick The Incident alongside Martin Sheen -- they play a pair of nogoodniks who hold a subway train hostage and I've heard great interesting things about this movie, especially as one of those dangerous-vibed NYC flicks that we all love so much a la The Warriors and The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, but I've never seen it! Need to fix that.

Visually everything I've seen from The Incident looks gorgeous, with those dark black-and-whites. It's on blu-ray so I imagine some of you have seen it? Anyway Musante worked as one of those familiar Italian-American character actors right up until his death in 2013 -- he did episodes of everything from Police Story to The Alfred Hitchcock Hour to Marcus Welby to The Rockford Files -- he also had a recurring role as a mobster on Oz, I guess. He was definitely one of "Those Guys." You know those guys. They're Those Guys. 

Dario Takes Manhattan

Enormous news for New York horror movie fans -- and horror fans anywhere who can get to NYC next month (and I suppose non-horror fans, there are things here for you too, but why can't you just be better) -- as Film at Lincoln Center has just announced a gigantic Dario Argento retrospective called "Beware of Dario Argento" running June 17th through 29th that will screen twenty of the Italian maestro's movies, including SEVENTEEN 4K restoration premieres (!!!), fifteen of those being World Premieres, including  masterpieces like Deep Red, Tenebrae, Opera, The Bird With the Crystal Plumage. And Dario's new film Dark Glasses is having its US premiere!

Oh and Argento will also be here in person for several Q&As and introductions alongside the films. This series more than any other yet is really testing my will as far as not going to public screenings still because of, you know, the ongoing pandemic or whatever. You can check out the whole line-up and write-up over on their site, although I will share the press release with you below -- tickets go on sale for Members of FLC today at Noon and for non-members tomorrow. Hit the jump for the full press release...

It's a Good Feel-Bad Weekend at the Movies!

There are two movies out in theaters today that I want to real quick recommend you seek out if possible, while also side-stepping writing proper reviews of them because in both instances I saw these movies months upon months ago, didn't write about them at the time, and then forgot to revisit them here in time for their theatrical releases. I suck, et cetera. Anyway I'm doing my least due diligence right now, and that's something! The first movie is Gaspar Noé's devastating and harsh small-scale flick Vortex, which stars the director Dario Argento and the actress Françoise Lebrun as an old married couple dealing with dementia while cooped up in a jam-packed-with-memories (and books!) Parisian apartment. And honestly this apartment, as claustrophobic as it might seem to most, looks like a dream to me. I aspire to their hoarder lifestyle. Anyway both actors are terrific and the film is deeply distressing, but in low-key and naturalistic ways that Noé's not really known for -- yes he uses a two-camera split-screen technique for the entire movie, but it's not a film that actively assaults you; it more just slowly leads you down a path to no return and it's so beautiful and so awful all at once. So yeah a real fun time! Highly recommended! Here's the trailer:

The second film I not reviewing but I am recommending is the Finnish nightmare fuel Hatching, a miniature fable equipped with talons that I saw during Sundance and very nearly wrote about but eventually didn't get to, under the massive crush of other stuff. Film festivals are tough in this way! But Hatching has been sneaking around the back of my brain ever since -- for one it's got some fantastic monster practical-effects that made my Inner 80s Child very very very happy. For another it tells its simple story wonderfully simple, with great economy, so it sticks in your brain in ways movies that try too hard don't. It feels like something your incredibly mean-spirited grandmother might have told you before bed one night when you were small and too impressionable. See it when you can see it!

Quote of the Day

"Yeah it’s a really curious genre. It’s a road movie, but it’s also like a Bonnie and Clyde romance. And they happen to be eating people. So it’s got a very thoughtful aspect to it about things that we inherit from our parents. A little bit like Call Me By Your Name, in terms of discovering you are gay, something you didn’t know about yourself. How do you deal with that?"

That is Oscar-winner and Shakespearean powerhouse Mark Rylance talking to GQ magazine about his next project, Luca Guadagnino's forthcoming film Bones and All, which will probably be out next year (I recently heard that Luca is editing it right now) and stars Timothee Chalamet and Waves actress Taylor Russell as star-crossed human-scarfing lovers on the run in the 1980s. I posted the first photo from the film right here, and a snap from the set right here, but the one up top (from the same day) I missed and it gives a definite better look at Timmy's hair-do. Electric orange, baby!

The film happily reunites Luca with his Suspiria writer David Kajganich, which I already knew, but I hadn't looked at the IMDb cast list in awhile and a ton of names are on there now -- besides Rylance there's CMBYN daddy-du-jour Michael Stuhlbarg! Chloë Sevigny (who just gave one of my immediate favorite performances of hers for Luca last year in his HBO series We Are Who We Are)! Also from WAWWA Francesca "daughter of Marty" Scorsese! And did somebody say André f'ing Holland??? Then there's director David Gordon Green??? Huh. Oh and holla...

... Suspiria (both versions) star Jessica Harper!!! Then there's young actor Jake Horowitz, who in the past year has been in the sci-fi flick The Vast of Night (seen below, reviewed here), the remake of Castle Freak (anybody seen that?), as well as Mickey Reece's nun-tastic horror flick Agnes, which screened at Tribeca this past spring and just came out on the 10th. I saw that at Tribeca but have kinda sorta forgotten the whole thing now, and should give it a re-watch. Anyway quite the cast, cannot wait, et cetera et cetera!

Last Night and Every Night Until

When Anya Taylor-Joy hosted the season finale of SNL this past weekend -- and she was funny right? I thought she did a terrific job; she is just a natural star -- they previewed a preview, by giving us a couple flashes from the trailer for Edgar Wright's forthcoming giallo-ish flick Last Night in Soho (aka probably my most anticipated movie of the next year, give or take a Dune) and telling us, "Hey wait don't shoot yer load yet, the entire trailer isn't dropping until Tuesday." Well get yer loads prepped y'all, it's Tuesday and the trailer's here, and is it ever load-worthy...

We've been waiting for Wright to make a giallo ever since he goofed the genre with his short film Don't! in the middle of the Tarantino/Rodriguez sandwich that was 2007's Grindhouse double-feature -- I can say now, with all these many years behind us, that I'm thankful he didn't turn that (admittedly very funny) one-trick-pony into a feature and waited for a full-bodied film story to present itself, because this looks absolutely stunning. 

This is out on October 22nd, finally giving us a Halloween movie worthy of the holiday -- I have a sudden Suspiria (both versions) sense surrounding me -- there's nothing I want more than this. I can't even write coherently about it. I'm giddy. Giddy! Giddy with gimme! Gimme right now! How are y'all feeling?