Jinnistan wrote:

For some reason, you motherfuckers told me that this film is some kind homage to Argento or Fulci. 
 

Just because he doesn't actually understand what makes either of those directors good, doesn't mean they aren't homages to them. He just sucks at movies, both as a director and a fan.

This is what makes me so angry about that movie. It's obvious shittiness isn't the problem. It's how cheap he makes the intentions of these films he's paying homage to. He makes them seem like the kind of movies a hack like him can create on a whim.





 

Rock wrote:

I’ve found it easier to appreciate his work when I put aside their effectiveness as homage. I think he’s more technically proficient than most of his contemporaries in the genre, and doesn’t bother with the attempts at depth that modern “elevated horror” aims for (but frequently bungles). There are modest charms to be found if you go in with the right expectations.

I suppose this could be true, if we don't fuss about his really bad homages, but then what is left for the viewer? I'm sure it makes his movies seem less frustratingly empty, and more entertaining, to take them out of their intended context, but in his failure to emulate someone like Fulci....what is he giving us instead? What does Wan offer when he isn't re-gifting better films. As a comparison, if you strip away all of Tarantino's successful and unsuccessful attempts to recreate film glories of the past, you can still see Tarantino in the end product. But with Wan, what is left once you remove everything he has stolen? If I look at Saw and The Conjuring and Malignant, what do I know about Wan the artist when thinking about these movies, beyond the fact he probably got good grades at film school. 

There is a reason I can rarely jive with artists who rely on little more than their technical ability. I can absolutely conclude that what he does isn't easy, no matter how much I dislike his films. But, is that really a good metric? Some blue collar stiffs can throw things up on an assembly line faster than I ever could, but I'm not going to pull up a chair and watch them do it.

Honestly, I think if there is any value in Wan it's through the comparison to the films he is ripping off.   I think his films are gifts when it comes to illuminating why someone like Fulci, who gets derided by critics as nothing but a director of nonsense and exploitation and unneccessary gore, as being more than the sum of his parts. Wan, in all of his technical subservience to what he thinks Fulci is doing, shows that technique is never enough. At the end of the day, there must be evidence that there is a person on the other end of the camera, getting his images to speak in a very particular and idiosyncratic way, for the movie to have any real value. Otherwise, we are just talking about film as diversion which, while being fairly sufficient for most people probably, is always going to come up lacking for me. And lacking in a really painful and aggravating way.


 

I guess I’m kinder to him because I think the state of commercial filmmaking these days is really poor on average, so someone who clearly cares as much about craft as he does has some value in my eyes. I don’t know if he has much of a signature beyond technical slickness, but I don’t think “hack” is a fair description. He clearly cares about his craft, and I think there are certain images and stylistic tics he’s attracted to. I wish he would combine them into something more off the cuff (I think Conjuring 2 is the closest he gets to instinctive, personal filmmaking), but I have a hard time holding that too hard against him.

I realize this sounds like what people say about Marvel movies and what have you, but I think Wan’s movies are at least competent at what they try to do whereas I think the Marvels of the world are not. But we probably don’t need to dig up all my complaints about the MCU again.

You’re not wrong.

Yeah, I liked Maestro alot. Both Cooper and particularly Mulligan are incredibly good here. A rare biopic that knows how to enter a life, and not just catalogue a bunch of milestones like a flaccid Wikipedia article.

Criterion Channel is doing a series on post-apocalyptic movies, so I ended up watching the three Castellaris. Escape from the Bronx is the best of them, pretty much nonstop action, often involving flamethrowers.

The Margheritis I watched on YouTube (they've all been uploaded in HD). The Commander is the worst, but the other two are well worth a look. Some pretty great miniature work in both. I think Code Name: Wild Geese is paced a lot better (and the print on YouTube seemed less prone to blurring).

Rollerball I watched out of my misguided fondness for early 2000s action crap and to see whether any of John McTiernan's better qualities could be found in the finished product. If you squint, there are a few shots that have his eye, but this is pretty terrible otherwise. Almost worth watching for the inexplicable night vision sequence.

Deadly Bet I watched as part of a collab with a few other Letterboxd mutuals. We've been watching action, usually martial arts, movies over the last few weeks. Started off with a few early Jackie Chan efforts (one of them had never seen any of his movies. This one was not great, but better looking than I expected for a DTV movie. Shaolin Invincibles I watched for the same reason. Goofy stuff, but it has gorilla suits, so it's automatically a good movie.

L.A. Takedown I watched because I was in the mood for Michael Mann (blame it on Ferrari) in TV mode (blame it on Miami Vice). Sunk a bit by the terrible leads, and obviously in the shadow of Heat, but otherwise pretty solid. The shootout is really good for a quickly shot TV production.

And I don't think you need me to sell you on The Running Man, although it's one of my least favourite classic Arnies.

There isn’t really any relation beyond both movies having mercenaries. The action in the Italian one is a lot tighter, for what it’s worth.

It’s fun enough. Not a favourite.

Excellent early giallo - psychological thriller with supernatural flirtations - which shows that director Luigi Bazzoni, who had such visually interesting later films like Fifth Cord and Footprints on the Moon, didn't always have to rely on Vittorio Storaro for sumptuous, dreamy images.  Even the film's more crude elements, some stilted dialogue and performances, seems to add to an overall Lynchian surrealism.  The dialogue issues may be a flaw of the English dub that I saw, but I think the narration should have been dispensed entirely, and perhaps the nicest things to say about Peter Baldwin is that he looks like a young Ray Wise and that he was probably better suited to a career as a TV director.

8.5/10
 

crumbsroom wrote:

Yeah, I liked it alot. Pure mood, the kind of film that has an eerie quality that is palpable enough, I suppose this is what frustrates some viewers who are thinking it should eventually have a more clear turn towards horror than it does. But it's exactly this kind of in-between vibe-- not quite Giallo, not quite horror, not quite Italian modernist existentialism--that I appreciated.

I'm not really sure who these people are.  I saw your comments about this film's 30% Tomatoscore, which is entirely the audience score.  There are three professional critic reviews, which I guess, even for an older obscure movie, isn't enough for RT to give it an actual Tomatoscore, but all three of the professional reviews are positive, so I don't understand how anyone interested in the film would allow something like an audience score to sway them (unless you're like one of these "populist criticism" assholes).  I suppose it speaks to the kind of viewer who only sees a number and nothing past that.

Also, I think maybe there's still a number of people who don't really understand what "giallo" is.  One of those pro reviews for this film says something like it's "more noir than giallo" (and I don't it's very noir either).  But giallo is more frequently than not closer to Hitchcock thriller than the kinds of slasher-horror that they inspired.  I mean, I'm thinking about those Umberto Lenzi/Carroll Baker films I watched last year, and I wonder how they would meet these "horror" expectations, even though they are incontestably classified as giallo.

Also, I guess The Possessed isn't a very good name for the film, and I'm not sure where it came from.  The original title, The Lady of the Lake, which was used for most of its European translations, is more apt.  Maybe someone thought it would be confused with the Philip Marlowe story.