Movies

Mad Howling in the Red Dark

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If you are ready for an agonisingly slow descent into hell, then Panos Cosmatos’ Mandy is the film for you. There are many reasons to instinctively refrain from watching it in the first place: yet another Nicholas Cage over-the-top performance; outrageous violence and buckets of blood; killer demons on motorcycles. What’s more, the film might change from one viewing to the next, but for me, it worked because I was in the right kind of mood, and that might prove crucial with movies like this. And I never watched a chainsaw duel I didn’t like. Continue reading →

A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #18: The Aviator

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d1ad56da-abce-4afe-9f45-79294aede9e3For the first episode of 2019, Julie, Mege and Matt revisit Martin Scorsese’s much-awarded but rarely-discussed The Aviator. Is it one of Scorsese’s best or a bit of a mess? Does Cate Blanchett’s Katherine Hepburn enter parody territory, and is it any less awesome for this? Will Mege pounce in defense of Leonardo DiCaprio? Find out the answers to all these questions and more, as the gang of pop culture baristas serves up some smaller helpings on AMC’s The Terror (a heady blend of Master and Commander and The Thing) and the interactive Black Mirror episode, “Bandersnatch”.

Also, we’re premiering our new theme tune “Mystery Street Jazz” at the end of the episode, so make sure to give it a listen. Thanks to composer Håkan Eriksson for his damn fine tune!

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The Rear-View Mirror: The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989)

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Each Friday we travel back in time, one year at a time, for a look at some of the cultural goodies that may appear closer than they really are in The Rear-View Mirror. Join us on our weekly journey into the past!

Love is a free agent. We may say that opposites attract, or that birds of a feather flock together or whatever; we have our kinks and fetishes and predilections and our angsts when it come to relationships and love and sex; we describe ourselves as homo- or heterosexual or polyamorous or bi or as of many colors of the rainbow, but we really don’t know why we fall for this person or that person. It’s a mistery, at its core, that crazy little thing called love.

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Burning, or: When you call Schroedinger’s Cat, does it come?

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How do we know what we know? More importantly, how do we know anything when the supposed evidence consists of absences? Does a cat exist that we never see or hear, and all we do is fill its bowl with food and clean the litter box regularly? Is a charmer’s glib confession that in order to feel alive he burns greenhouses every couple of months enough proof to convict him of these crimes – and of worse ones? And when a loved one vanishes, is her absence proof that something horrible has happened? Does Lee Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in) make himself believe that something is there, or does he make himself forget that what he is looking for actually doesn’t exist – as with the tangerine in the pantomime his friend Hae-mi shows him?

Burning

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The Rear-View Mirror: Goodfellas (1990)

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Each Friday we travel back in time, one year at a time, for a look at some of the cultural goodies that may appear closer than they really are in The Rear-View Mirror. Join us on our weekly journey into the past!

goodfellas

A car rides into darkness. The film cuts to the three passengers and we hear noise from the back of the car.

“The f*&k is that? … Jimmy?” says the man behind the wheel. “Did I hit something?”

“… the f*&ck is that?” the man in the back says. They pull over and get out. Lit by the red back light of the car the men draw their weapons. The man in the trunk is bloodied but still alive. Swearing, they finish him off. They are Henry, Jimmy and Tommy, our protagonists.

After this violent beginning Henry’s voice-over starts with what is probably the most famous line in the movie:

“As far back as I remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.”

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That Old, Familiar Tune

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Is this what some people feel like when they watch a Quentin Tarantino film? There I was, watching the penultimate episode of The Night Of, HBO’s 2016 prestige crime/prison/courtroom drama. (Beware spoilers for The Night Of, but also for The Man Who Wasn’t There.) In its final, expertly staged scenes, the is-he-or-isn’t-he-innocent protagonist Naz becomes a willing accessory to a swift, bloody jailhouse murder. As the scene begins, violins start playing a melancholy tune – one that I immediately knew: the makers of The Night Of had taken a page out of the Coen Brothers’ songbook, using a theme written by composer Carter Burwell for The Man Who Wasn’t There to colour a scene of ruthless brutality.

The Man Who Wasn't There

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What luck today?

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His name is Zain, and he is standing in the office of a police station in Beirut, Lebanon, in his underwear. He hasn’t seen a bath in days and looks malnourished, his face is grey with sleeplessness and worry. The doctor who comes to examine him assesses his age at 12 or 13. Zain himself doesn’t know, his parents can’t or won’t produce a birth certificate – maybe there never was one. Zain, like his siblings and his parents, is an illegal citizen in his own country. Because of the pressure of abject poverty and a war-torn economy, the parents abuse their kids verbally and physically. Zain does what he can to protect his siblings, most of all his younger sister Sahar because he is sure that his parents will try to marry her with a shopkeeper. Continue reading →

Throwing down the gauntlet of 2018

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It’s saying something if the first thing I remember about the movie year 2018 is not a movie, but a character. Thanos looms large – how could he not? With one fell swoop, Marvel solved its most prominent problem and made very, very sure that we wouldn’t forget their biggest, baddest baddie. He has depth – I believe him when he says that he fulfills his mission partly against his own will, and that it cost him everything. And he – goddamn it – is successful. Of course, my experience of Avengers: Infinity War was deeply colored by my favorite daughter sitting beside me who couldn’t believe that half her favorite MCU characters went up in ashes. Maybe this was this generation’s Bambi. Continue reading →

That Was The Year That Was: 2018

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In past years I always forgot about doing a look back at the year that was until my friend and co-blogger Mege did his own retrospective – and by that time it was too late. This year I come prepared and bearing not just one or two but eight awards. Enjoy!

A Damn Fine Cup

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The Rear-View Mirror: Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

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Each Friday we travel back in time, one year at a time, for a look at some of the cultural goodies that may appear closer than they really are in The Rear-View Mirror. Join us on our weekly journey into the past!

Nobody understands the confidence game better than David Mamet. His movies, most of all his debut House of Games (1989), show you in great detail how his con men entrap, use and manipulate their victims for money, influence, sex, or all of the above. His take on the long con is so simple that he is a playwright first and a moviemaker second; his games only need a stage and a few props. He often enlisted the late Ricky Jay, who was a magician first and an actor second. It’s also proof that more complex things are going on than meet the eye, but the con very often happens in plain sight. The point of any confidence game is this: “It’s called a confidence game. Why? Because you give me your confidence? No. Because I give you mine.” It’s the perpetrator’s choice, and the victim is hopelessly trapped. Some characters know what is happening to them, but can’t do anything about it. Others simply have no clue. There is a cruel purity to such a concept.

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