Month In Review: February 2014

1. Lancelot du Lac (Dir. Robert Bresson, 1974) [Rewatch]

2. Woman in the Dunes (Dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1964) [Rewatch]

3. Day of Wrath (Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1943) [Rewatch]

4. Kaiba/The Tatami Galaxy (Dir. Masaaki Yuasa, 2008-10/Anime Series) [Rewatch for The Tatami Galaxy]

5. Assassination (Dir. Masahiro Shinoda, 1964)

6. Oedipus Rex/Arabian Nights (Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1967-1974) 

7. Flesh (Dir. Paul Morrissey, 1968) [Rewatch]

8. Horrors of Malformed Men (Dir. Teruo Ishii, 1969) [Rewatch]

9. A Chinese Ghost Story (Dir. Siu-Tung Ching, 1987) [Rewatch]

10. Employees Leaving the Lumière Factory /L' Arroseur arrosé/Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (Dir. Louis Lumière, 1895) [Rewatch]

11. Stranger by the Lake (Dir. Alain Guiraudie, 2013)

12. Pierrot le fou (Dir. Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)

13. 4:44 Last Day on Earth (Dir. Abel Ferrara, 2011)

14. Paradise: Love/Paradise: Faith  (Dir. Ulrich Seidl, 2012)

15. Crimson Gold (Dir. Jafar Panahi, 2003)

16. Yojimbo (Dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1961)

17. Drums Along the Mohawk (Dir. John Ford, 1939)

18. À nos amours (Dir. Maurice Pialat, 1983)

19. Anatomy of Hell (Dir. Catherine Breillat, 2004) [Rewatch]

20. The Impossible Voyage (Dir. Georges Melies, 1904) [Rewatch]

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Honorable Mentions (In order of preference):

The '?' Motorist (Dir. Walter R. Booth, 1906/Short) [Rewatch] 

Duck Season (Dir. Fernando Eimbcke, 2004)

47 Ronin (Dir. Kon Ichikawa, 1994)

Breaking the Waves (Dir. Lars von Trier, 1996) 

The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (Dir. Sergio Martino, 1971) 

Orguss 02 (Dir. Fumihiko Takayama, 1993-1995/Anime OVA)

The Manson Family (Dir. Jim Van Bebber 2003) [Rewatch]

Tokyo Psycho (Dir. Ataru Oikawa, 2004)

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Images laid bare from the following sources...

Main List:
http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/lancelotdulac-corpse.jpg
http://deeperintomovies.net/journal/image09/womandunes1.jpg
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3520/3789960878_088792b0e7.jpg
http://static.zerochan.net/Kaiba.full.331414.jpg
http://www.thiseuphoria.com/anime5/tatami-top20.jpg
http://arneadolfsen.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/ansatsu-002.jpg
http://horrorcultfilms.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Edipo-Re.png
http://artforum.com/uploads/upload.001/id05407/article01.jpg
http://fugitivecinema.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/flesh-copy.jpg
http://goregirl.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/horrors-of-malformed-men3.png
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhglnzelpFl1zPNgA6F7BpIlOu0yPtI1BkcZoTmKWY5V6MrTUXIs5zJT1DWjXfYS3aJRuadtvkng_2qHJbMrrCuoMVETZ89b0s65sXyybOywW32uOyv0-Nc4q4HQTr7eXJvCO84SsN0qnE/s400/longtongue.jpg
http://www.worldsmostunique.com/images/images/worlds_first_film_ever.jpg
http://program.hiff.org/assets/images/2013_hiff_fall_festival/thumbs/STRANGER-BY-THE-LAKE-pic-2_3.jpg
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTOBEXjuqqQxmLmUS_iC-OtIm7ZIln6KthXbleK0NVXRUakx3DmrulnhKugHEI8xSi97EJPC7_5vAliXFcPjyg7OclcQzwiRwBp10Xdq_q0kt8RuTvr5jE7D85WrIGO9JEMq94sn-KlNg/s1600/Pierrot+le+Fou.jpg
http://www.semprelastessastoria.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/4-44-last-day-on-earth-1.jpg
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0ddmV0EEKGNWeYvI9J75bo0YRXhannWmKqcz6sD898HYDZzPV8qh8mCjPRi4-YSDfug2pAOBB53Ai7gB7b6Qv6DX4zBGc6SkNwXiHlF5tUwkUtgjfVGts82YGfXRlZqo9GvDQU0HfS-nX/s1600/paradise-love-movie.jpg
http://cineplex.media.baselineresearch.com/images/594139/594139_full.jpg
http://sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/image004.jpg
http://media.screened.com/uploads/0/4280/654337-yojimbo.jpg
http://www.scaruffi.com/director/ford/ford4.jpg
http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mbzfkllUJR1rj4l53o1_1280.jpg
http://www.videotapeswapshop.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/tumblr_lklo5h7awR1qg6tb5o1_1280.gif
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/03/18/arts/18dvd.650.jpg

Honourable Mentions:
http://filmnitrate.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/The-Motorist.jpg
http://oi42.tinypic.com/e0o19v.jpg
http://www.coffeecoffeeandmorecoffee.com/archives/47%20ronin%20ichikawa%201.jpg
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqEb_bYLfN806EEa34HbNr_-UfwmjcJshcQQUD23d1srGmZGmDdo-JEBewG2lbMMd2om0djx6NbscSsgaCl-IxW906Ggrqkqthjrt8YbUHQZhylrifrhD2LN-L-CfA771LL_8Ijgba0eo/s1600/breaking-the-waves-1996-05-g.jpg
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqcT8V521b7e-i68uHuTInSUOGg1X03ye7NuNamSzXtWMV_nKK3nKnrBpnBa9eiiTQHSIa-zNXdI3YfI4Lk7g20jlgxecdK5kHfm3hUVRAtP5zOYGtsNf_ZTQhv5dDOGVHd0X1lw2GGso/s1600/Strange_Vice_of_Mrs_Wardh_004.jpg
http://images.myreviewer.co.uk/fullsize/0000209013.jpg
http://www.beyondhollywood.com/uploads/2013/06/manson3.jpg
http://www.cinemastrikesback.com/news/thumbs/puzzle420.jpg

Videotape Swapshop Review: Anatomy of Hell (2004)

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-sL-uE1XV2K0/UC-cBc5ZaAI/AAAAAAAANzs/CKTMANmjr-8/s1600/2004+Anatomy-of-Hell.jpg

Dir. Catherine Breillat

If there ever was a divisive film, this one is such an example. In fact for the most part Anatomy of Hell is viewed as awful and going too far. There is the thought though for me that this violent hatred for the content of this film that I've read justifies the existence of it. Sometimes a bluntness this strong is needed, and while there are aspects of the characters' dialogue that I disagree with on a philosophical level, it still causes me to think hard about why it was included in the film. It is better to try to grasp what the film is trying to do than to merely dismiss it as garbage, and as this review below attests to, revisiting this film, which I have not done since film studies at college over six years ago, had an immense effect on the material I saw again.

Review Link - http://www.videotapeswapshop.co.uk/19694/anatomy-of-hell-2004-director-catherine-breillat/

From http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x66/mothsmoths/aoh19.jpg

A Little Death: Stranger By The Lake (2013)

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5Wi8ykGjTTdk8ZTcEhT-UU5IHZuvXffl0XYAl1jQIoiYAqYAnC8OV9LEWY02jyMZGFMX49sk3OJdo30xrJL2F2sbWrJgsb12C9PbZD-EP3Z9S6mEw1wW-wfccMaN83s1oaZDVtVvEwms/s1600/Stranger+By+The+Lake.gif

Dir. Alain Guiraudie

Cars are left side-by-side to each other at a dead end of a country road, an improvised car park. This image repeats in Stranger By The Lake, set over consecutive days. Repetition, similar actions and events happening but with more and more complication. It's summer and Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps) goes to a beach each day, a gay cruising spot where men can sunbathe, swim, interact, or go into the woods to have sex with any of the other patrons. The film begins at first as an erotic, naturalistic drama, as Franck is unable to find a romance or even a brief sexual fling each day there. Instead he develops a friendship with Henri (Patrick d'Assumçao), a older male who sits on the other side of the beach by himself and never goes swimming or cruising. Very static shots make up the film. No music. In the throes of summer, the beach and surrounding woodland is beautiful and cut off from the rest of the world. A vast sea is shot in the brightest blue and you could get lost within the surrounding woods.

Naked men lay on the beach, explicit full frontal nudity, completely casual, in a way that makes the taboos of male nudity a complete farce. At tines these men look like deities on holiday. The sex is explicit and real, even if body doubles were used. It actually amused me to see a film with real acts of sex on a cinema screen. In fact this is the first film with hardcore sex I've seen at the cinema. As the nearest multiplex is in another city to me, the nearest art cinema to have seen this further afield, to see such an explicit work on a giant cinema screen than on DVD for once is a vast difference. Only now writing this review do I also realise, usually as a solitary viewer, that I viewed such scenes of ejaculation and sex in the prescience of strangers I didn't know, all male young and old in the day time, and that I never gave consideration to the sex itself as I left my seat to the in-cinema cafe but to the unsolved thoughts of what the film was altogether. I feel hesitant talking about sex with even my parents, yet complete strangers did not bother me with this film, too enraptured by said film and more concerned my head was blocking the screen for the person behind me. Having actually seen a film now, at a cinema, with hardcore sex that was available to see for a wide audience, even in an "alternative" cinema, now makes the fear I had in viewing any real sex, hetereo gay bi etc., completely stupid by how it never registered to me in the viewing as I was more concerned for the characters and what the director was intending to do. It also makes the fact, especailly in Britain, we're still debating this issue within cinema just as farcical. After this film ended, I walked out, passing a glance with the only other person who stayed until the end credits finished, and the only thing on my mind was wrangling the moods I felt for the film, not necessarily these hardcore images by themselves. The scenes themselves have a real, alluring eroticism that even for a heterosexual viewer like myself can feel, unbelievably passionate when experiencing viewing the film. Brilliantly though, even as Thanatos and Eros start to intermingle, the director Alain Guiraudie also has the down-to-earth and absurd also take place alongside the erotic. Condoms strewn on the woodland floor to the annoyance of someone about to make love to Franck, and a running gag of a chubby guy who likes to watch others have sex and masturbate nearby, sometimes to the bafflement of the party he's near. The fact that this man is fleshed out, character wise and literally, beyond being a gag into a loveable personality himself shows a rich dynamic to the eroticism and characterisation too that is rewarding. This is not just a misery fest like a lot of arthouse films with hardcore sex in them are stereotyped as, not helped by films including ones I admire that are this, nor neither is it flimsy hardcore. This for me feels like someone who actually cared about depicting sex in a way that even viewers like me who aren't gay can feel as much as a gay viewer could.

Part of the way through however, Franck views a heinous incident, falling in love with the mysterious but likely dangerous Michel (Christophe Paou). Their romance blossoms but as a police inspector (Jérôme Chappatte) enters the world of the beach, Franck's romance may be for the worst. Less a murder mystery than a psychological suspense drama based on one man's desire, Stranger By The Lake proves you can have a make version of the femme fatale, alluring yet dangerous. The difference is the figure of desire here is a very masculine, muscular and bearded male. There have been films where an average Joe/Jill falls in love with a very dangerous person; the director has said the film's an expedition into his own sexuality, but there is a universal aspect to the story too, the fear of potential danger and how as much it might be a draw to them, as they know how ill-advised their romance could be rather than naive about it. The inspector comments that only two to three days after the heinous incident, the patrons of the beach are acting as usual, as if nothing has happened, but the environment is a fragile one. Its cut off from everything, but it's not that far away from the rest of the world. Once, humorously, in a man wandering through wanting to meet "horny" women, but when a boat passes by its clear how thin the distance from the rest of the world actually is. Everything appears to be normal in the secluded beach too, but the murder does linger amongst the patrons at the back of their activities.

Until the end the film continues with an exceptionally engaging character drama with these characters that populate the beach. The film never leaves this location, the repetition of Franck arriving at the beach and regular faces met, including always saying hi and talking to Henri, giving the film a sense of lived-in reality, but also a rigorous structure to work around. If something strays from what is repeated before, that means something is very amiss. The erotic desires of Franck and Michel are palpable and legitimately sensual, but it's clear, especially through Paou's performance, Michel is someone "off" from everyone else. Regardless if his lovers were other men or women, there is something very amiss to him. I could be sticking my foot in my mouth, as a heterosexual male discussing a film by a gay filmmaker, but I question what critic Armond White said in that this film shows a retrogression in depicting gay men when it's a film set around a specific story with specific characters. Its beach world is incredibly normal, welcoming so, as well as sensual, the fears Guiraudie might be expressing clearly interpretable in the fact that the danger, wrapped around a potential thriller, is not linked to homosexuality itself but a concept that has existed in all the arts, and for any form of physical and emotional desire. The lover who you crave, love, but who could be harmful to you at the same time. This doesn't mean the fact that this is a gay filmmaker making a psychodramatic work around gay men should be ignored - if a film is specific, it should be allowed to. The problem is when its scrutinised under a perception outside of the individuality of films that oppresses the ability to gauge each film because a "respectable" portrait always has to be encouraged without a logical reason to. It doesn't need to do this and feels richer for this. Its greatest virtue is also being an immensely engaging, slow boiling hybrid of genre and drama. The ending, the last minutes, are not that of a Hitchcockian thriller, a blurb praise the film's been saddled with to sell it, but that of the central relationship and the theme within it. What was an abrupt one when I left the theatre screening room, realising this, becomes pitch perfect for the whole film when you consider this dark romance is the central plot.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXoQV2dMYce6a9wjqckylW8kw-LELYAvZkun9ulJcIDwgxkBgeanhKyaIF-43_V2iUYNMoQFPPTuo2cRpWOx_lHdU-4JH3A02PKxKFlQ4JBJ3UIHa7cqktvWh9TlNkr3IRBIESse3VByI/s1600/stranger-by-the-lake-14-01.jpg

Videotape Swapshop Review: Tears of the Black Tiger (2000)

From http://d.ratingmovies.com/servlet/Main/CoverDisplay/Tears_Of_The_Black_Tiger_(2000).jpg?film_rn=9587

Dir. Wisit Sasanatieng

Whether the review is positive or not, to watch a film like this that attempts to be something different and unique is of some interest. Particularly when its using a genre with as wide a scale like the western. Existing from as far back as the beginning of cinema, the western, despite being an inherently American concept, has transferred globally, the films made outside the USA distinct in what is done different in them, what is done to same and what the tone is for them. I intend to watch as many westerns as possible, and review as many of them as possible, because the difference are just as interesting for me as the great films within the genre are breathtaking to see.

Review Link - http://www.videotapeswapshop.co.uk/18732/tears-of-the-black-tiger-2000-dir-wisit-sasanatieng/

http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/195/1/2/tears_of_black_tiger_by_kriegdersterne77-d5771ss.jpg

Most Meaningful First Viewings and Re-Evaluations of 2013 Part 11: The "T"s

Takeshis’ (Takeshi Kitano, 2005)
That this area of Kitano's career has been dismissed compared to the rest, this being the first of the three in these meta-autobiographic works of his I've seen, is sad considering this film is so alive with wit and interest. Complete absurdity start to finish, as one critic perfectly described this period of his work the creation of a man who is free. Skewering Hana-Bi (1997) ay the end, the film that broke Kitano into the West for many, he both reflects on his career throughout this one with a satirical light and showed he had more than enough creativity for another decade of films.

The Tatami Galaxy (Masaaki Yuasa, 2010)
Rewatched this last month and saw Kaiba (2008), the director's earlier TV series, making this one fresh in my mind again. If only more Yuasa projects were as available as The Tatami Galaxy was, as he already stands up as a potentially great anime auteur whose ability to tackle with human emotions alongside visual creativity is rewarding.

Taxi zum Klo (Frank Ripploh, 1981)

Theorem/Pigsty (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1968-9)
Expect more Pasolini films to be seen as monthly lists at least for February. He is becoming one of the most interesting and rewarding filmmakers I've going through the work of.

They Called Us ‘Les Filles du Roy’/A Scream From Silence (Anne Claire Poirier, 1974-79)
A type of cinema I haven't seen a lot of. A fascinating documentary in the former, the later a deeply unsettling film which, while once finding its later half's cerebral discussions too disconnected on the theme of the damage of rape, has stayed throughout the year and become more powerful.

They Eat Scum (Nick Zedd, 1979)
Sometimes complete rawness is more rich. Transgressive, course rawness. Funny too, especially with a habit of making jokes against disco, and I'm a fan of disco music.

Thief (Michael Mann, 1981)

This Must Be the Place (Paolo Sorrentino, 2011)

This Sporting Life/O Lucky Man! (Lindsay Anderson, 1963/1973)

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (Michael Cimino, 1974)
This is a great way to show anyone who distinct seventies cinema could be, and why its missed as badly as it is by many.

Time to Leave (François Ozon, 2005)

Tomu Uchida
(Souls in the Moonlight Trilogy (1957-58-59), Chikamatsu’s Love in Osaka (1959),
Yoshiwara: The Pleasure Quarter aka. Hero of the Red Light District (1960), Fugitive from the Past (1965))
If only Uchida's work, like many other under appreciated Japanese directors, was available in the West. There's large gaps in the global view of cinema, and any of these films I've been lucky enough to see would fit perfectly into it.

A Touch of Zen (King Hu, 1969)

Two Orphan Vampires (Jean Rollin, 1997)
I've developed a habit of praising maligned or obscurer works by well known directors even over their more well known work. I hope this trend continues.

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Images from the following sources:

http://cineplex.media.baselineresearch.com/images/155913/155913_full.jpg

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaYXvzgIYySxt5vSxBBOP3TJ2KM-Vym6820y8n24nJEfPcMDTtUWcAQ-jHux3wVqbNlLADBTuyou4Op77pfW4fRujCmyYnz1QhhxEpq5RCCQEqdzgxSLOkNKxZUYBN8XCxCzHkWUT_Nhc/s400/tatami-galaxy-6.jpg

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http://blogs.whatsontv.co.uk/movietalk/files/2012/06/paso2.jpg

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http://s3.amazonaws.com/auteurs_production/images/film/a-scream-from-silence/w448/a-scream-from-silence.jpg?1311941185

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https://feminema.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/touch_of_zen.jpg?w=480&h=196

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