My weekend's off to a VERY stressful start.

So yesterday afternoon I took the bus to my parents' house 30 minutes out of town, to pet-sit for them while they're having this weekend away. But then when I arrive there, I found the usually unlocked back screen door locked and I had no key; I didn't take one with me because again, that door is usually left open for me to enter the house when necessary. I opened the lock there containing spare keys, only to find neither of those were for neither screen door. I then tried calling my parents but they had no reception and by now I was already stressed, so I had to swallow my pride and call my sister, who lives a few minutes away. When she arrived and I explained everything (all of which she took with a grain of salt, as she continued to do later), she then had to drive me home and back again just so I could retrieve my other set of keys, which turned out (to my genuine confusion) to also be the wrong ones; I also tripped over on the lawn once we returned to my parents' house because I hadn't realised one of my shoelaces was undone. So then we both had no alternative, as it was now past 6pm, but to go to her house for the night, where I had dinner, watched my team the Broncos lose by 48 points and sleep on a foldout bed (although that was easily preferable to the floor). I had an anxiety attack before I finally nodded off.

Then today I woke at 6:30am, and after 8am we all went (including my brother-in-law now) back to my parents' place to double-check the lock and the keys inside it per my sister's insistence. After she and he saw those really were also the wrong keys I tried not to be too snide or snarky when I said, "See, I told you they didn't work." They both then left, with my approval, and I stayed there to at least pet-sit like I was in town all along to do, albeit for much shorter than planned, and I helped myself to a beer there because I figured, 'Damn it, I deserve one after a shake-up like this.' I then planned to catch the bus home at 11:12am but as I left the service station toilet (just across the road from the bus stop) at that minute, the bus was departing so I stayed put and tried to hail the driver when they turned around and passed me, to no avail. By then I was fucking livid, so after seeing when the next bus was and learning it was over three hours away, I tried to think for a few minutes and then realised I had to call a taxi. So I did that, and once it arrived the ride was fine and the driver was a lovely lady who played great music and undoubtedly was about to get a big windfall from my 30-minute trip. Her company was a big bright spot, but everything culminating in it was confusing, guilt-inducing, embarrassing and incredibly stressful for me. Now I'm back home, but as soon as I got here, I hunched over with relief and almost cried. Hopefully, this weekend will improve for me.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #306: Sword of the Stranger (2007).

 

It's the Sengoku period in Japan, and Kotaro is an orphaned young boy living in the countryside with his pet Shiba Inu dog, constantly on the run from violent pursuers. One day while sheltering in a disused temple, Kotaro meets Nanashi, a wandering swordsman who is actually a ronin: a Samurai without a current master. Nanashi quickly comes to dislike Kotaro (and, frankly, with some justification) but then they're attacked and pup Tobimaru needs medical attention, so Nanashi then reluctantly takes Kotaro and Tobimaru with him on his travels. En route, Kotaro turns out to be a prophesied child requiring training to fulfill his destiny.

This anime Samurai road movie was almost nominated for the 2008 Best Animated Feature Oscar; keyword: almost. Personally, though, I wouldn't have even submitted it for consideration. Its animation is faultless but its narrative is one hackneyed cliche after another, with bland dialogue and numerous ignored chances for humour. Plus, I found Kotaro really quite annoying. He goes from rude and bossy to overly cute and vibrant, and that contrasting change also imbalances his character arc quite jarringly. I understand the idea of making young protagonists work for our affection but here that bridge was just a bit too far to cross.

Naoki Sato's music score is actually genuinely beautiful, and with the animation it forms a rather and crisp and fresh pastry. But the filling - the narrative - was one I found so derivative and predictable, it resulted in a very insipid pie for me. I'm afraid I think Sword of the Stranger is in dire need of sharpening. 5/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #305: The Lighthouse (2019).

 

In New England in the 1890s, Ephraim Winslow (Willem Dafoe) accepts a job as a "wickie," or a lighthouse keeper, with the island's longtime keeper Thomas Wake (Robert Pattinson) as his supervisor. Ephraim is contracted for a month, and the job entails more than just operating the controls. The lighthouse will be his home, with Wake, for the month and so in that time they will need to bond. But as the month progresses, and a massive storm seals them inside, Winslow and Wake each come to harbour very uncertain, even suspicious feelings about the other man.

This 2019 black-and-white sophomore feature from Robert Eggers, who co-wrote the screenplay with his brother Max, was one I was keen to see after his latest movie The Northman absolutely blew my mind, and I was correct to be interested in it. Eggers is quite obviously an art house filmmaker and he frequently incorporates German expressionistic motifs and natural atmospheres, but he seems to know those touches are (at least, I think) suitable and effective for storytelling reasons instead of aesthetic ones. He invokes those stylings merely to put viewers in the mood and mindset of the movie and its characters, and in this case that's why the expressionistic inflections (if that's the right word) work so well. Winslow and Wake are both increasingly unhinged, isolated and untrusting of each other and we won't feel any tension from the film if the specifics of their shared situation aren't driven home to us. Eggers drives this home to us with a consistently firm grip on the steering wheel.

But this effect isn't all Eggers' responsibility. His regular cinematographer Jarin Blaschke's unsettling photography was deservedly nominated for an Oscar and a BAFTA, the production design is realistically intimate yet striking in details and Mark Korven contributes a chillingly minimalist score. The only flaw I noticed here was what I considered Dafoe's almost too hammy performance in one scene; by contrast Pattinson stays in control of his turn throughout. It didn't impress me quite as much as The Northman did, but The Lighthouse still stands as a disturbing, but shining beacon. 9/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #304: Being John Malkovich (1999).

 

Struggling puppeteer Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) reluctantly accepts an office job to make ends meet for himself and his pet enthusiast wife Lotte (an almost unrecognisable Cameron Diaz). As a clerk his professional life is uneventful, until one day he stumbles upon something most bizarre and unexpected behind a filing cabinet: a portal that leads directly into the brain of Hollywood superstar John Malkovich (playing a fictionalised version of himself, obviously). So then, of course, he opens it and becomes John Malkovich for 15 minutes, after which time he's removed from John's brain and dumped onto the New Jersey turnpike. Craig then tells Lotte and his playful, free-spirited colleague Maxine (Catherine Keener) about the portal and, after gradually convincing them that none of what he's saying is ridiculous horseshit, they both, too, join in on the fun in becoming John Malkovich. Along the way, Lotte and Maxine get to know each other, and all three of them come to understand more about their own psychologies from having literally entered and meddled in somebody else's.

Frequent collaborators Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman have since made off-the-wall movies like 2002's Adaptation., 2020's I'm Thinking of Ending Things, 2013's Her and my personal favourite, Jonze's 2009 masterpiece Where the Wild Things Are. And it all started here for both. Being John Malkovich made Jonze, aged just 30, one of the youngest ever Best Director Oscar nominees and Kaufman was also nominated for Best Original Screenplay (they both lost to Sam Mendes and Alan Ball respectively for American Beauty). This is a proudly weird film, but its weirdness is the tolerable kind in that the premise is weird, but how it's explored is very lucidly handled and what it's meant to allegorically represent is ultimately quite relatable and profound. In other words, it's never weird just to be unique or ostentatious. Cusack does his usual shtick, but Diaz is surprisingly effect in a role that's both dramatic and comedic and Malkovich revels in playing a highly exaggerated literal version of himself, but Keener (who herself was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar; she lost to Angelina Jolie in Girl, Interrupted), is easily the standout with an excellently layered and understated turn in a role that was probably harder than it looked. It's also sharply edited, filmed with crisp energy, and a pulsatingly effective score is ladled over it all.

Again this is certainly a postmodern brain-teaser that demands your disbelief to be suspended, but if you can do that, I think you'll find Being John Malkovich to be an engaging and rewarding filmic statement about human psychology and relationships. 9/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #303: My Mistress (2014).

 

Charlie (Harrison Gilbertson) is a lonely and sheltered 16-year-old boy on the Gold Coast reeling from the recent discovery of his father committing suicide. While then trying to find outlets to ease his grief, he meets Maggie (Emmanuelle Beart), a French housewife who just also happens to be, albeit secretly, a BDSM dominatrix. After landing work with her as a pool boy (nothing cliched about that, huh?), Charlie soon has the hots for Maggie and becomes a willing participant in her private sexual games. Meanwhile, his life outside Maggie's house is almost as dramatic but much less interesting to him.

Look, admittedly what grabbed my attention about this 2014 Aussie erotic drama was the sexual content but even with that, I found My Mistress increasingly insipid and even tame. I can only liken it to a piece of chewing gum: initially it's absolutely delicious, but from a lack of variety its flavour runs out after about 20 minutes. The BDSM scenes are discreetly handled but I just got the sense director and co-writer Stephen Lance either deliberately or was forced to water them down to avoid the movie getting an R rating, and the rest of the narrative they're in I found seriously dull and hackneyed. The lack of a music soundtrack compounded this, and there's no sense of romanticism or lushness in the cinematography either.

Beart, one of the icons of modern French cinema, seems to enjoy spicing her screen image up here as a publicly conservative yet privately wild housewife, and Gilbertson keeps the sweet innocence to a pleasant minimum, but their efforts only make somewhat of a difference. For me, My Mistress is an underwhelming and timid telling of a narrative that could've been tactful, daring and brilliant. 6/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #302: 12 Monkeys (1995).

 

In 1996, a deadly virus decimated the Earth's population. The survivors had to take shelter underground, and a group called the Army of the Twelve Monkeys were allegedly behind the outbreak of the virus. Jump forward to 2035, and James Cole (Bruce Willis) is a prisoner in an underground compound who's chosen to travel back to 1996 with a cure to save humanity. However, he is erroneously sent back to 1990 instead, when after trying to tell authorities he is from the future to save humanity from the impending virus, psychiatrist Dr. Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe) diagnoses him as a paranoid schizophrenic and has him sent to a mental hospital. There he meets anarchic legitimate patient Jeffrey Goines (an Oscar-nominated Brad Pitt), whose late father Dr. Leland Goines (Christopher Plummer) may have held the answer to stopping the virus. Cole now fails an escape attempt but then returns to 2035, before finally arriving in 1996. From there he kidnaps Dr. Railly and forces her to take him to Philadelphia to hopefully find the Army of the Twelve Monkeys, or a trace of Dr. Goines.

In true Terry Gilliam form, this movie is very weird; however, alongside his less mainstream works like Time Bandits and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, it's actually conventional, at least visually. It's far more cerebral than either of those ones, which are both visually and narratively postmodern and outlandish. I'm not sure Gilliam is as well-suited to science fiction as he is to fantasy, which tends to be more spontaneous, but kudos to him nonetheless for diversifying here and his direction patiently unravels the very technical and esoteric themes in this narrative that are very characteristically SF. Husband and wife David and Janet Peoples' notably smart and lucidly plotted screenplay, based on the 1962 French film La Jetee, meshes well with Gilliam's understanding interpretation of it, and Roger Pratt's photography and Mick Audsley's editing combine to keep everything flowing evenly. Finally, Willis, Pitt and Stowe each make their characters jump engagingly to life and collectively form a strong trio of anchors through the narrative.

I don't think it's quite good enough to have inspired a TV adaptation, nor is it as brilliant as Gilliam's previous effort, 1991's The Fisher King, but 12 Monkeys is nonetheless a refreshingly brainy mainstream science fiction thriller that demands you pay attention to its maze-like structure, and amidst this interminable real-life pandemic it may have acquired even more relevance still. 9/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #301: 3some (2009).

 

Jose (Adriana Ugarte), Marcos (Nilo Zimmerman) and Jaime (Biel Duran) are arts classmates at a Spanish university. To help Marcos with his impotence, Jaime sets him up with Jose, whose portrait Jaime has agreed to paint for their course. Once Jose and Marcos get acquainted, Jaime joins the fold and they have a menage a trois which exposes, among other more physical things, their shared and subjective dreams and feelings. Soon, however, Marcos and Jose become rather uncomfortable with the situation, and Jaime refuses to give Jose his portrait of her once he completes it, which deepens the estrangement.

This very erotic Spanish romantic drama from director Salvador Gonzalez Ruiz and writer Enrique Urbizu and based on Almudina Grandes' novel is very strongly reminiscent of Alfonso Cuaron's Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001) and Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers (2003) as a sexually-charged coming-of-age film with twenty-somethings. But while it initially has considerable spice and charm, for me it peaks (in more ways than one) about forty minutes in. I had no problem at all with the sexual content; in fact, admittedly I watched it primarily for that. But those scenes are so frank and daring yet tactful, and so stuck together in one section of the film, the rest just didn't come close to being as vivid for me. The two afore-mentioned films were more cohesive and effectively sensual for me because they spread their racy content throughout their durations with adequate gaps in between and also touched on other topics rarely explored in such films like politics and bourgeois culture. This one, meanwhile, has flavour that lasts about as long as bubblegum's for me.

The three principals have adequate chemistry together and give understated, natural and (given the content, brave) performances, but for me 3some collapses under the burden of its narrative and the misjudged rendering of that. I also thought it needed more of a soundtrack. 6/10.