Movies

Six Damn Fine Degrees #126: The Horror

Mege3 Comments

Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

Most dramas will circle around the problem until they reach their core issue. Horror movies don’t – they seem to go for the jugular while the real issue might be shrouded in mystery until – gasp! – it is revealed, often gorily and always unforgivably visually. What I like about a truly good horror flick is the unflinching way they attack the real issue at the heart of its story.

Take the Australian ghost story Lake Mungo (2008), for instance. At the beginning of the film, it is already too late – we know what the result of the story is, and we get told how things unfolded. In any drama, the focus would be on the grieving parents, but Lake Mungo, while having a lot of feelings for Mum and Dad, uses them to tell the story of how Alice got where she ended up. The movie peels away layer after layer of the mystery until, incredibly, we are confronted with what happened. And that, of course, entails a lot of suspension of disbelief since we are stuck in a very scary ghost story. I may have said so elsewhere, but Lake Mungo is one of the best horror movies in years, and one of the best Australian movies ever.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: All These Women

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Join us every week for a trip into the weird and wonderful world of trailers. Whether it’s the first teaser for the latest instalment in your favourite franchise, an obscure preview for a strange indie darling, whether it’s good, bad, ugly or just plain weird – your favourite pop culture baristas are there to tell you what they think.

Trust Julie to do a fun, interesting deep dive into topics the way only she can: on Friday, she wrote about actress Gene Tierney, Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side, and the unexpected connections between the two.

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A Damn Fine Espresso: April 2023

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Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles is not an easy watch – and for a long time it was especially difficult to find an opportunity to watch it, but thanks to its top slot in the Sight & Sound critics’ poll in 2022, it returned to a number of cinemas, giving some of us a chance to watch (or even rewatch) Akerman’s contribution to radical cinema. At 3 hours and 21 minutes, during which little happens that would make up the plot of conventional movies, Jeanne Dielman asks a lot of its audiences – but, as Julie and Alan argue, it gives a lot back. What did the two of them get out of Akerman’s film dedicated to three days in the life of a widowed bourgeois housewife and occasional sex worker? How does its running time and structure work? And will their suggestion to shorten the title to a potentially catchier JD stick? Tune in to find the answer to, well, most of these questions!

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: What a tangled web we weave

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Join us every week for a trip into the weird and wonderful world of trailers. Whether it’s the first teaser for the latest instalment in your favourite franchise, an obscure preview for a strange indie darling, whether it’s good, bad, ugly or just plain weird – your favourite pop culture baristas are there to tell you what they think.

The recent news that apparently a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo was in the works sent ripples of outrage through some corners of the internet – but it seems that our resident Hitchcock-phile Sam is remarkably open-minded about the possibility of someone else taking a stab at the classic.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #124: Vertigo remade? No head for heights!

samlinder3 Comments

Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

Young and innocent they are certainly not: When Marvel veteran Robert Downey Jr. and screenwriter Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders, Spencer) were announced to be working on a remake of no other than Hitchcock’s Vertigo – considered by many to be the best film ever made – the world of film (fandom) was aghast: a sacrilege to the Holy Grail in Hitch’s filmography! Two filmmakers gone madder than Norman Bates! Dizzy spells among even the most hardboiled critics! What a wonderful opportunity, I thought, to wrap my head around this, particularly after Alan’s delicious piece on watching early delights by the Master of Suspense.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Asteroids and Androids!

The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

Join us every week for a trip into the weird and wonderful world of trailers. Whether it’s the first teaser for the latest instalment in your favourite franchise, an obscure preview for a strange indie darling, whether it’s good, bad, ugly or just plain weird – your favourite pop culture baristas are there to tell you what they think.

Even someone who might consider themselves a reasonable Hitchcock fan might not have heard of Young and Innocent before – which is all the more reason to check out Alan’s Six Damn Fine Degrees post from this week. And as YouTube doesn’t seem to have a trailer for the film, here’s the next best thing: the entire movie. Enjoy!

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #67: Second Chances – Two Androids called David

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What is it about films featuring androids called David that makes them, let’s say, not entirely successful with audiences and critics? Following their recent trip to the Stanley Kubrick Archive in London, Alan and Matt dedicate this this year’s Second Chances episode to two sci-fi films by iconic directors that are unlikely to feature on those directors’ best-of lists: Ridley Scott’s Alien prequel Prometheus (2012) and Steven Spielberg’s A.I. (2001). Both films have recently been revisited by critics who found more to like in them than they originally recognised. Will our baristas also enjoy these films better this time around? Or will the films fare worse the second (or third) time around? And just what is it about androids called David?

Also make sure to check out these past episodes:

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #123: Young & Innocent

Alan Kuhl Graham3 Comments

Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

When it comes to the early British films by Alfred Hitchcock, there’s a famous few that grab all the attention: the likes of The Lodger, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Lady Vanishes and The 39 Steps. They’re all hugely entertaining, but one of the reasons they retain their status is that watching them you can spot so many of the ideas that Hitchcock was to take to Hollywood with him and make his more famous classics. It’s like listening to the early songs of an artist who’ll go on to conquer the charts – it’s clearly the same talent, not quite as polished, but then there’s something thrilling in how unpolished it is.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: All you’ll be eating is cannibals

The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

Join us every week for a trip into the weird and wonderful world of trailers. Whether it’s the first teaser for the latest instalment in your favourite franchise, an obscure preview for a strange indie darling, whether it’s good, bad, ugly or just plain weird – your favourite pop culture baristas are there to tell you what they think.

If the past is a foreign country: how do we watch films that are approaching their hundred-year anniversary? While working on his Criterion backlog, Matt recently watched Show Boat, but while there are things there to enjoy without knowing the historical context intimately, the musical’s handling of the United States’ history of slavery and racism is a mixed bag, and it’s not always easy to look past what is problematic at the things that may be surprisingly progressive. And some scenes manage to tick both of those boxes at the same time.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #122: You can be my bad guy any time

Matt3 Comments

Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

Lock up your daughters (and your sons, quite possibly) – the British are coming! It’s pretty much impossible to watch Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest and not be bowled over by the suave charms of its British star. That voice, the confidence, and the man certainly knows how to wear a suit.

But enough about James Mason. Cary Grant is also pretty good in the film.

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