The Lords of Salem (2012)

NIGHT 3

     "We've been waiting, Heidi... We've always been waiting. "

 

The Lords of Salem (2012), is Rob Zombie's return to independent horror filmmaking. In present day Salem, Massachusetts recovering-addict Heidi works as a DJ at a local radio station. One day a strange record is sent to the radio station with Heidi's name on it, this record has no information with it except that it's by the "Lords" and Heidi's co-workers decide it'd be fun to play it on the radio. But this bizarre music has a strange affect on Heidi and the women of Salem.

The best thing about this movie is the originality. Yes these are themes we've seen over and over: a witches curse affecting someone in present day, creepy satanic imagery, a cult group raising the next anti-Christ... but somehow this movie does it all and makes it all feel fresh and original. This film is part horror and part "art film." Which is something I don't see too often, but works very well.

The Lords of Salem is Great at showing and not telling. The film doesn't tell you outright that Heidi's a recovering addict, but you can figure it out from the early scenes in her apartment. Same goes for Heidi & Whiteys relationship too, I can't tell you how refreshing this is in a world where every single movie feels the need to have characters explain every little detail of a relationship for us.

All of this, combined with so much very beautiful and original imagery of the film makes for some very memorable scenes. Oh hey, and not a single CG effect in the whole movie! I can't remember the last time I've seen that in a recent movie!!

Mostly nitpicks here but I'm not sure I love the ending of this film, but it's alright. I kind of wish Rob Zombie just went full on art film and didn't feel the needed to explain anything in the end. Because as it currently, the film is it feels very open ended intentionally for a sequel. Hell, House of 1000 Corpses (2003) seemed less open-ended than this and it got a sequel!

And what was with the design of the Satan-dwarf-twiggy-tumor-guy? Can't say it wasn't original.

This movie has some of the best and most "real" feeling characters I've seen in a movie all year! And that's really saying something. They all seem like real people nobody's character is tied to any kind of a stereotype or outline of a stock character we've seen on the big screen so many times before. It's amazing how when you put real characters and experiences into a movie it feels so fresh and real!

The Lords of Salem has some really beautiful cinematography. Every shot in the movie is dark adding so much to the mood. And most of the film is still but when the camera does move it has those beautiful, slow, sweeping long shots, not a single handheld shot in the movie. You can tell Rob Zombie's been studying some master filmmakers.

And then the great original soundtrack (composed by Zombie's bandmate, John 5) on top of this sweeping dark cinematography just creates such a beautiful mood. Bravo Mr. Zombie, bravo.

The Lords of Salem (2012) is part art film, part horror film and isn't the greatest horror film by a long shot... but I really wish more people were making horror films like this these days.

4.5/5 Stars.

Happy watching!




The 31 Nights of Macabre Movies continue tomorrow with Brian de Palma's Telekinetic classic, Carrie (1967).  

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Taxi Driver (1976)

Intro
While pouring back through all the Tarantino films recently I realized a couple things:
1) There's not that many of them. I mean he's only one guy and he pretty much only works off of his own material that he wrote... which takes time, and thus this is very understandable.
2) His films make reference other movies constantly. Now call it what you want homage, reference or just plain theft but I'm thinking that a lot of people don't catch the majority of these references to other films because frankly, we don't have the film same exposure as a young Tarantino did going to the grindhouse theater constantly in his youth or working in a video rental store. However, hypothetically with the vastness of the internet and Amazon, Netflix etc. these films should be easier to get a hold of today, if you know what you're looking for that is.

So I figured there's probably more people out there, like me, who crave more Tarantino constantly and I could showcase some films that I'd consider essential viewing for Tarantino fans. And thus the 10 must-see films for Tarantino fans was born. Now let me warn you this is in no way a comprehensive list and there's no particular order to these either. There's probably hundreds of films that Tarantino references in his own films, and I found enough films I could write about to probably do this series again but that will have to wait until next time there's another big Tarantino release.

DAY 4: Taxi Driver (1976)

Taxi Driver might seem like an obvious choice but I felt like putting it on this list because Tarantino has been adding a lot of little homages to this film throughout his career. Tarantino considers this film a masterpiece and frequently lists it in his top three favorite films of all time (once again thanks to The Quentin Tarantino Archives for compiling these lists.) This film has frequent Tarantino-collaborator Harvey Keitel in it and years later Tarantino even gave this films lead, Robert De Niro another role of a very socially awkward guy in Jackie Brown (1997). Tarantino's first script True Romance (1993) features a somewhat large subplot of a guy killing a pimp to save a young girl from her life of prostitution (just like this film) and he's even wearing a green army jacket when he does it (though this choice might've been thanks to Tony Scott the director of that film). In Bruce Willis' segment of Pulp Fiction (1994), Bruce Willis's character runs into a taxi driver named Esmeralda Villalobos who drives a cab that's very similar to the one in this film (kinda strange for a film set in the 90's no?) And most recently in Django Unchained (2012), Christoph Waltz's character Dr. Schultz uses a hidden mechanized derringer pistol similar to the one Travis builds in this film.

"All the animals come out at night."

Taxi Driver (1976) is a dark and moody character study of a lonely, frustrated and bored man directed by Martin Scorsese. The film follows Travis Bickle a former Marine living in New York City who begins driving a Taxi because he can't sleep at night. As the film goes on we see how sick of the world Travis really is.

I love the world that is portrayed in this film. I love how real it all feels, I like how scary some of the random people they show seem and I really like how you can almost feel the mood of driving around the city at night. Things like the cab drivers meeting up at diners between shifts to just sit around and talk really seem to ground this odd movie for me.

All the acting is good in this film but I was especially blown away by the young Jodie Foster as the young prostitute Iris. This was her first major film role, and at 13 it's no surprise that she got an Academy Award nomination for this part because she seems wise beyond her years in this film.

This is admittedly nitpicky but there seems to be a little bit of a missed opportunity to show how Travis feels after killing the man in the convenience store. He seems scared in the moment, but this is his first time killing a person (as far as we know) and the first time he actually does something about the "filth" and crime of the city. I would have liked more of a scene showing if he enjoyed it or if it scared him or if he felt bad about it or whatever, the film just kind of moves on after this.

One of the best things about this film is how interesting it is. I really think this is one of the best character driven stories on film and something about combination of the unique setting, strange characters and moody atmosphere really drags you into the film and keeps your attention.

I love how the film treats the lead character Travis Bickle. It's not too obvious about the oddness of Travis Bickle in the very beginning but as the film goes on you slowly start to realize that there might not be something right about this guy. You eventually seem him get strange obsessions in his head and even jump to weird conclusions. But I really like the very little things, like Travis will say something slightly odd and then you see the person talking to him kind of get uncomfortable or give a slight roll of their eyes, this something I'm sure most people can relate to. Robert De Niro's performance is really great in all of it's subtleties and how earnest he seems int this role. It's really hard not to feel for and like the guy.

The music of this film really adds a lot to the mood of it. The score was composed by Bernard Herrmann who is probably most well known for his collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho (1960), Vertigo (1958), etc.) but also for the score to Citizen Kane (1941) & the opening to The Twilight Zone television show. Unlike most of his previous work however, the score to this film is predominately built around a jazzy saxophone line that seems to meander through the darkness of the city, really cool.

I also think it's really magnificent how the pace of this film seems to change with the mood of the main character we're following. At the beginning of the film Travis lacks direction, he can't sleep and the sequences seem really drawn out and dream like but later on as Travis' gets more fed up with the world around him scenes go by a lot faster and tension really seems to build effortlessly. The mood of this film is pure art, absolutely beautiful.

Taxi Driver (1976) is an very artistic film and probably the best character-driven story ever told on film. 5/5 Stars.

Happy watching!





This film is part of my month-long Tribute to Tarantino in honor of his latest film Django Unchained (2012) and his 20-year career. If you've missed any of my reviews so far, be sure to check out his filmography and click on any film you've missed.

The 10 must-see films for Tarantino fans countdown continues tomorrow, so be sure to check back!



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Talking Head (1992)

"Instead of a movie existing only to tell a story... the challenge is how faithfully you can tell a story called a movie."

Talking Head (トーキング・ヘッド) (1992) is an interesting meta film written and directed by Mamoru Oshii. The film follows an unnamed hero who calls himself a "migrant director," someone who can come onto any troubled (anime) film project late into production and copy any directors style and always makes sure the film is finished on time. Our story starts when our hero is hired by a producer to do his hardest project yet, a much awaited anime movie that needs to premiere in two months, very little work has been done already and the director himself went missing months ago.

So as I've mentioned before on this blog, one of the big "trademarks" of a Mamoru Oshii film is he likes to ask really deep theoretical and psychological questions in his films through the narrative. If that's your thing, this is your film. Talking Head is PACKED with those kind of questions, not only about life but also about film and different peoples roles in film. This is really cool because I could tell this film probably sums up his entire view and thoughts of film (and anime) and working on film in his life up until this point. I enjoyed this pretty thoroughly but I'd say Oshii might have over done it a little bit with this one, because the questions and "higher concepts" are very constant through out the entire film.

The biggest problem with this movie I had was that the deadlines for the director seems absolutely ridiculous, I understand this was probably the intent and this helps us to learn who everyone in the production team is very quickly but this is something that really took me out of the story. Right off it was hard for me to get into it because there's no possible way anyone could produce an animated film in two months that isn't even complete on a script level, (and that goes without all the mishaps and foul play that happen in the narrative!) Maybe it wouldn't affect anyone who knows less about film and animation as much, but I have to believe that this film was made with those people in mind specifically based on how little explaining this film does so this seems misleading and confusing to me.

Also because this film does little to explain a lot about film and animation, I feel like you'd have to have at least a basic knowledge of the production of them to even understand this movie, otherwise I think you'll just get lost in the weirdness. This is something I really enjoyed because I'm really partial to those things but I could see how this would really turn some people off to the movie. And I'm really not holding this against the film actually, it's fine if a director wants to make a film for one specific audience but I am going to put this here just in case, more of a warning than anything else.

Where this film really shines is it's direction. This is a very heavy, high concept and very difficult film, a lesser director would not have been able to pull this off so well. This film blends meta with art house and classic detective mystery genres in a way that just blows my mind! The film is very low budget only using a handful of sets, and this is something that is worked into the concept because almost every set is very obviously "built" on a stage inside a theater with often no walls or attempt to cover the theater setting. This alone adds an another level to the film, bridging the gap between film, theater and real life in a very interesting way.

Tonally this film is actually very similar to The Red Spectacles (1987), the whole film has a very sullen tone but carried out in a very comedic way. Actually I'd say this film is WAY more successful than The Red Spectacles in that respect, this is not something that is easy to do and this film does it very well. And the humorous side of the film allows Oshii to make some very slight references to his other films, something I probably wouldn't have noticed, (but picked up on because I dedicated this week to his films!) but it's also done in a way that is not distracting at all... something that lots of auteurs often get caught up in too much and it becomes too obvious/distracting.

Also wanted to do a little shout out to the lead actor of this film Shigerou Chiba, if you recall in my last couple reviews this guy was kind of a sore spot for me and I thought he didn't work well at all in the role of Koichi in the Kerberos Saga, however in this film I thought he killed the role! This is how he should have played Koichi in my opinion, because I really liked his character in this movie.

Talking Head (1992) not for everyone, but it's definitely worth checking out if you are interested in film or animation (anime) production, or what goes on inside a directors head during said productions. But the film could also just be worth wile if you're into very strange surreal, almost wacky films. I'd say it works very well on different levels. But be warned, this is no light viewing material. 4.5/5 Stars.

Happy watching!





Continue to check back because everyday this week as I am continuing to review the films of acclaimed Japanese director Mamoru Oshii. If you missed it be sure to go back and check out my review of The Red Spectacles (1987) and my review of it's sequel StrayDog: Kerberos Panzer Cops (1991).

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