Double feature of the week: Just Because You’re Paranoid….

Repulsion and The Burbs

This week we’ll be taking a look a couple of classics that deal with paranoia. This is a great theme for a film to explore. When done well, it can be a great way to heighten the mood and play with the audience’s perception of reality. So, strap on your tin-foil hat and keep one eye peering through the blinds because in all likelihood, everyone is actually out to get you.

This week’s first film is Roman Polanski’s classic “Repulsion” (1965) starring Catherine Deneuve as Carol, a Belgian girl living with her sister in London. Her sister’s married boyfriend seems to bring out the worst in Carol. She finds herself in a trance, unable to associate with the outside world. Her sister leaves on holiday and Carol has to deal with being all alone in her apartment. As the catalepsy mixes with the hallucinations, she very quickly digresses into a state of madness that she can’t find her way back out of.

After “Repulsion” it really wouldn’t be a bad idea to cleanse your palate with something on the lighter side. I suggest Joe Dante’s “The Burbs” (1989). Tom Hanks stars as everyman, Ray Peterson taking a vacation at home when some new neighbors move in. Nobody sees them, their house is trashed and very strange noises are heard all through the night. Ray’s pretty sure something fishy is going on, plus Walter’s (old man on the block) missing. “……I'm going over that fence, and I'm not coming back until I find a dead body.”….. That seems reasonable… right? This movie’s a hell of a lot of fun. I love Joe Dante comedies. This Master of Horror has also made both “Gremlin” movies,” Innerspace” and one of my personal favorites, “Matinee”.

Enjoy.

Double feature of the week: A Day In The Life

The Breakfast Club and Crank

Last week we looked at a couple of films that took place in a single location. Naturally, this week’s features will all take place within a single day. Again, we’ve seen this before. Sometimes it’s an attempt to keep a hyper pace to an action film. Other times it’s just a way to show a little slice of a slightly specific life.

We’ll start this week off with a classic I’m sure all of you have seen. The Brain, the athlete, the basket case, the princess and the criminal make up this microcosm that represents the average high school experience. John Hughes’ “The Breakfast Club” (1985) is a modern classic and probably Hughes’ best film. Five students who wouldn’t typically be caught dead together are forced to spend an entire Saturday in detention with each other. Although the dialogue is sometimes clunky and not all of acting is spot on, the brilliance of this film is in its relatability. Every audience member would find one of these characters to identify with at first. Then gradually, as the characters in the film open up, all the rest of the other five begin to become more relatable to every individual.

Our next film had much less of a social impact. Unless of course you measure social impact by how totally rad it is. The writer/director tandem of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor’s first film “Crank” (2006) follow Professional assassin Chev Chelios (coolest character name ever) around on the day he is attempting to tender his resignation. This film pushes a lot of envelopes, both technically and from a story-telling standpoint. Most of the film was shot on consumer grade camcorders. This allowed the filmmakers to get in closer to the action without having to worry about damaging expensive equipment. This technique was carried over even more so in the film’s sequel “Crank 2: High Voltage”

Enjoy.

Double feature of the week: One Location

Rope and Pontypool

Shooting a film in one location has long been a staple for the low budget independent film maker. It’s a great way to keep a story framed and it really keeps the budget manageable. And, if you happened to want to stage a siege of the living dead, you really need a place for the characters to be trapped.

The first film of the week is a bona-fide classic. Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rope” (1948) is a great story framed in an experimental technique that Hitchcock pulled off with the utmost skill. In the opening scene, you will see the film’s only visible cut. The rest of it flows as though it were one continuous shot. Back then however, you could only get about ten minutes of footage per shot. The cameras simply couldn’t hold anymore film. So, every ten minutes of this film, the camera will focus on a still object. The cut is made, film reloaded and the story continues. I think it’s hard to appreciate at first glance the level of difficulty involved in making a film this way. Every line of dialogue or character movement has to be calculated and choreographed with metronomic discipline.

This week’s second “Pontypool” (2008) is a Canadian sci-fi/horror that takes place almost entirely in a small town’s (Pontypool) radio station. We’ve seen the plot before. A mysterious deadly virus begins infecting a population and before you know it, the crazies are banging down the door. What I loved so much about this one is how effectively unnerving it is while ultimately showing very little. This is true tension building. It’s a great example of less is more low budget filmmaking.

Enjoy.

Double feature of the week: Arthouse Revenge

Memento and The Virgin Spring

There have been a few pretty good revenge films to come out lately. Michael Caine still kicks some ass in “Harry Brown”. “I Spit On Your Grave” got a remake last year and Korean director Kim Ji-woon takes a pretty damn good stab at it with his newest film, “I Saw The Devil.” This week we’re not just talking about revenge films, but more specifically, Arthouse revenge films.

“Memento” (2000) is about a man who is searching for his wife’s murderer. Unfortunately for him, he has no short term memory. He compensates by taking Polaroid’s and tattooing himself with all that pertinent information. The murder/mystery story told from a non-linear structure makes for a truly original experience. This film goes down as an experiment that succeeded in my book. Now with two Batman films and “Inception” under his belt, I think some of us have forgotten that this was Christopher Nolan’s first great film.

It’s hard to mention Arthouse without talking about Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman. He has an amazing body of work and my favorite of his just so happens to be the 14^th century rape-revenge film, “The Virgin Spring.” Wes Craven unofficially remade this classic as a midnight B-movie called “Last House On The Left” in 1972. While his version soared to grindhouse infamy, it never really attempted to be anything more. Bergman’s original however has the balance of grief and rage you would more likely find in the real world.

Enjoy.