Dir - Juliana Rojas/Marco Dutra
Overall: MEH
This uneven, highly tranquil feature-length debut from Brazilian filmmakers Juliana Rojas and Marcon Dutra, (arriving after over a decade of the duo producing a number of shorts), barely qualifies as a horror movie or anything remotely entertaining at all. At first, the tone is so lackadaisical as to be refreshing with all of the characters dialed down just a notch or so above zero, barely any music anywhere, and the story itself spending about an hour on what would otherwise have been just an initial set up. It is unmistakably about the class system and economic hardships faced in contemporary Brazil, but just how its infrequent, strange and/or supernatural elements play a role is barely touched upon, let alone explained. If there are even such elements present in the first place. This is precisely because the film never seems to get going and it rather abruptly ends just as it begins to finally wake it's audience up. The last scene is also remarkably out of place and seems to paint the whole thing as a comedy, making it more of a practical joke than giving it a frustrating, ambiguous climax which would have even been far preferable.
Dir - Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.
Overall: MEH
The word "pointless" is assuredly the most accurate to describe the inevitable remake, reboot, prequel, premake, preboot, repre, quelmake, makeboot, or whatever the fuck 2011's The Thing is. The creative team involved have gone on record as desperately trying to defend its existence in the first place, saying it pays homage to John Carpenter's seminal 1982 version and calling it a companion piece that retreads the same themes of paranoia and isolation. Which is all a very polite and respectable way of saying they really like John Carpenter's movie and wanted to make it themselves because having one movie that already did all this stuff is not enough apparently. This argument can be made for every film that is not left to be its own thing, (pun intended), in the past, but this The Thing is so deliberately derivative of the last one that it not only cannot hope to possibly compare to such a lauded and beloved movie, but it also cannot NOT be compared to it. In this regard, it cannot be viewed on its own terms by its very design. It does not attempt to one-up its predecessor thankfully, but just exists parallel to it with less memorable characters, less memorable special effects, less memorable directing, less memorable music, Mary Elizabeth Winstead in place of Kurt Russell, and interchangeable everything else.
Dir - Pedro Almodóvar
Overall: GOOD
Described by Pedro Almodóvar as "a horror story without any screams or frights", The Skin I Live In is a cross between the often influential Eyes Without A Face and well, pretty much every other Pedro Almodóvar movie. The renowned filmmaker's fascination with sexual kinks, the female body, and how complex his emotionally-driven characters are finds an ideal environment to thrive here under the umbrella of Thierry Jonquet's novel Mygale from which this is an adaptation. It is also the first pairing between Almodóvar and Antonio Banderas in just over two decades and the actor predictably excels in the very non-textbook, mad doctor role here. Speaking of pleasant predictability, the film is as wonderfully photographed and meticulously designed as any of Almodóvar's works and the way that the plot deliberately reveals its intentions is something that could have fallen into utter nonsense in the hands of a lesser director. The audience is taken to uncomfortable places so gradually and in such a controlled fashion that the way Almodóvar succeeds in making something so bizarre and downright horrifying also so engaging is one of the reason's his films are routinely talked about and admired in the first place.
No comments:
Post a Comment