Movie Catch-Up: Eastern Promises, The Exorcist, Deep Red, Control, and Nights of Cabiria

The past two months have seen a tremendous influx in film viewing, and thusly, I am far too backlogged to give each and every film the proper analysis it deserves. That statement means doubly as much for the content of this post, chock-full of cinema geniuses young and old, from Cronenberg and Fellini, to Anton Corbijn, music video vet and director of 2007's Control. So bear with me in the next few updates that bring us right in to Top Ten season. Yes, the Top Ten Best Movies of 2007 are already being calculated and will be up and ready for debate by the end of this month.

Saturday, October 13, 2007

I'm a big David Cronenberg fan and Eastern Promises, the next feature film after his miraculous 2005 movie, A History of Violence, reassures that to the max. The crowing achievement in his new film must be the brutal and fleshy fight scene, in which actor Viggo Mortensen is stripped down to nothing and fights for his life against two large (and clothed) gangsters; not only for the way this scene makes the violence personal, but for the intimate camera of Cronenberg regular Peter Suschitzky, and the superb makeup from Stephan Dupuis (who won an Oscar in 1986 for another Cronenberg vehicle, The Fly), the movie becomes beautiful (yet bloody) in a personal way.


Saturday, October 27, 2007

The weekend before Halloween, a few friends and I met up for a "Horror Movie Marathon," (once one reaches their late twenties there will be no late-night celebrations on Wednesday workdays, apparently) involving cheap champagne, red vines and carrot cake. Combined with our gory double-feature that included Euro-Slasher classic Deep Red and Friedkin's 1973 terror, The Exorcist, naturally we felt sick by 2:00am when we wrapped up. If you haven't seen Italian director Dario Argento's Deep Red (Profondo rosso), please do; it'll give you a jump, and is more artful than exploitative than its horror counterparts. Ditto on The Exorcist, which somehow gets scarier every time you see it.


Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Control is the sort of fiction film that feels so real it could almost be a documentary. It's about Joy Division lead singer, Ian Curtis's rise to stardom before his suicide at age 23, and chronicles his aims at reaching adulthood prematurely: his wedding, the birth of his first child, and his extra-marital affairs. It is the quick rise and fall of a man too frustrated with his youthful identity to patiently grow beyond it, and find greatness. Shot entirely in black and white by Anton Corbijn, who is mostly known for his work in rock documentary and videos--One Night in Paris, not the movie you're probably thinking of, but rather a Depeche Mode concert--is one, and there are more that cover U2 and Metallica also. You can see the director's past genre influence on this film's style, and is a real tribute to Curtis's talent, and a quiet eulogy-in-retrospect on his death. The soundtrack is also phenomenal.


Tuesday, November 8, 2007

Somebody out there that I went to graduate film school with is probably shocked to learn I had never seen Federico Fellini's Nights of Cabiria until early last month. For whomever that may be I refer you to the brief Onion Opinion headline, "Oh My God, You've Never Seen Every Movie Ever Made?" So now that that's out of my system, I should say how lovely Nights is, tender and heartbreaking, but the clownish Cabiria (Giulietta Masina) keeps up our spirits regardless. I doubt there is anyone more adorable in screen history, excepting the male version of herself, Charlie Chaplin. I really loved this movie.