CS Film Club II

PhantomKnight

The Lost Daughter
The Gambler
Oliver!
City Of God
13 Assassins
Iron Monkey
The Gentlemen
Drugstore Cowboy

I will do Train to Busan you hyperlinking sonofabitch!

I'll go with The Florida Project.

Caught up with The House of the Devil. Good recommendation PhantomKnight. I liked that a lot.

The House of the Devil

The House of the Devil was not Ti West's first movie, but it was the one that most firmly established him as a major force in horror filmmaking, something he seems to really be delivering on as of late with his X trilogy. The film is an 80s throwback in both style and substance, but not in the sort of pandering and obvious way we've become accustom to in recent years. 16mm film and frequent zooms are used but less to call attention to any nostalgia than to tap into the time period to tell an interesting riff on the satanic panic. I'm not sure the movie ultimately amounts to much narratively, but it's a fun time all the same. West creates a definite atmosphere and develops his characters enough so that we do invest in more than just the upfront thrills. The movie also builds to a really cool climax and is generally just a neat, offbeat slice of modern horror.

B+


Also 85% sure the main theme song was inspired by "Moving in Stereo" by The Cars.


Pandora's Box

The most singularly arresting aspect of Pandora's Box is most certainly Louise Brooks, who is a force of personality, a flapper who explores hedonistic pleasures with delightful innocence and palpable enjoyment. Her freewheeling sense of fun and lust for life immediately pulled me into Pandora's Box, G.W. Pabst's melodrama of a fallen woman whose pleasure-seeking comes crashing down and brings ruin to everyone she touches. That's how Pandora's Box is often described, anyways, but I'm not sure that's totally fair. The structure of fallen woman stories usually have that element of punishment, but neither Pabst nor Brooks's performance feel particularly judgmental of protagonist Lulu. Her victimhood is not invited by her sexual hedonism or debauchery, but the result of the insecure, capricious, and violent.

And boy does this film go to some dark and violent places. Much as the first act revels in Weimar decadence (to great effect I might add), Pandora's Box becomes a far more haunting journey, the final episode in particular a clear precursor to noir with its foggy streets and chiaroscuro lighting. One shot of someone emerging from darkness and smoke which opens the film's final act is especially haunting. Pabst more generally shoots this thing with luminous beauty, Pandora's Box rich in gorgeous imagery which runs the gamut from spellbinding eroticism to crushing tension and despair. The film on the whole is a great achievement of the silent era, and certainly encouraging to see more from both Pabst and Brooks.

A


Speaking of inspirations, I wonder if some of the imagery towards the end of this inspired Fritz Lang's M. There are certain similarities.

Drac recommended Pandora's Box to be back in 2009 and I actually have the review from 13 years ago.  These days I remember very, very little of the film but I'm down to Criterion Channel that puppy again soon.

Pandora’s Box
09-24-2009 08:12 PM

Pandora’s Box isn’t so much about a set of characters more than the results of these characters’ actions, actions which sometimes consist of just existing. Up until the 5th act or so of the film I really wasn’t sure where the film was going (the film is divided into 8 different ‘acts’ that are more or less chapters as settings and characters are introduced). There are vague references to the mythological Pandora’s Box in the movie, but nothing that really made me think ‘ah yes, there is a connection here.’ I didn’t see one, that is, until the last few acts of the film. The story revolves around Lulu, a woman who uses her charm and seduction to influence those in her life, but like the Pandora of myth, Lulu also brings misfortune to those she congregates with. Using her charm, she attempts to further a career by marrying a man who is infatuated with her, only to watch him die at her hands while he’s in a jealous rage. She escapes from her trial, only to resort to living in the slums of London with the help of the man’s son, who is also in love with her. What’s key about her character is not how she uses the men in her life, but how she depends on them. Her identity doesn’t lie with her ability to manipulate; her identity exists with the men in her life.

One thing I noticed was that even for a silent film, there was little written dialogue, which added to some of my confusion toward the beginning of the film. However, once I got the gist of what these characters were trying to accomplish, I found it to be quite an interesting piece on not just Lulu, but all the characters she ends up manipulating. My only real criticism would be how many of the scenes seemed to run quite long, not really contributing much to the advancement of the film except for putting more focus onto the set pieces. Still, with that being my only complaint, that should just tell you how much I enjoyed the movie. Definitely one you could watch again.

A- so says Doomsday

Train To Busan

In a strange way the 'zombie' genre can lend itself to almost any setting or period, it's surprisingly malleable when you think about it. Heck, the movies don't even need to be horror, look at how successful Shaun of the Dead and One Cut of the Dead turned out to be. You can set zombie movies and shows in just about any environment from shopping malls to suburban communities to maximum security prisons. With Train to Busan, we're dropped onto a train in South Korea as a workaholic divorcee who's indifferent to the affections of his young daughter travels with her to see her mother. While en route, the country becomes overwhelmed by a rapid zombie attack and the father must protect his daughter and other passengers from the zombie onslaught as well as other wary and nefarious passengers who will stop at nothing to protect themselves, even if it means sacrificing those sitting next to them.

The plot of Train to Busan is pretty straight forward, like I said it's zombies on a train. Like just about any movie though there are things I really enjoyed about it and other things that I would have done differently. On the positive side, I enjoyed how the movie wrote its own rules when it came to zombies. Some people often have a problem with that as some things seem to be pretty solidified in zombie lore, like becoming a zombie once you're bitten or shooting them in the head to kill them off for good. Train to Busan doesn't worry with how zombies are dispatched, in fact I don't think there are any zombie deaths at all. They're beaten and fought off but I don't think there are any instances of zombies being permanently down for the count. It does embrace people turning into zombies once they're bitten but unlike Night of the Living Dead or Walking Dead where turning can take several hours, Train to Busan's zombies turn within minutes if not seconds. We've seen some films like 28 Days Later where infection takes over almost immediately. Then again, I don't think that would really be considered a proper 'zombie' movie as Rage is a virus constructed in a lab then released. But then again, now that I'm typing this they offer a line of dialogue to the idea that the Train to Busan infection also originated in a lab. Whatever, the zombies in Train to Busan don't mess around nor do they take any time waiting for humans to get their business together. They're there to wreck stuff and people don't have an easy time taking them down.

I think the main drawback to Train to Busan is that it telegraphs who's who in this story to a fault. After seeing enough horror movies (or even just the bare minimum) you can identify pretty quickly what the fates of the characters will probably be. Stuffy businessman? He's going down. Tough, hardcore cool guy? He'll knock some heads but he'll end up being lunch. More often than not even the main characters are dispatched before the credits. The pregnant woman though, you know she's safe (I will give credit to Zack Snyder in that he not only killed the pregnant woman in his Dawn of the Dead but he turned her and her infant into zombies. Say what you will, at least that's different). There's also that stuffy businessman who ends up being kind of a monster and becomes the tool in the deaths of several people. Maybe having him be a catalyst of fear and panic would have been enough, those characters aren't uncommon in these movies but he wound up being a straight-up murderer towards the end and screwed everybody over. It kind of took me out of the movie when the climax was almost solely due to him. The movie makes up for these drawbacks though by actually being touching and emotional at the right points. There's just enough of the father daughter relationship (or lack thereof) established that you really feel the gut punch as the third act moves along. And as simplistic as it seems you actually root for characters to survive or get taken down. It sounds like such a simple exercise but a lot of movies are able to screw that up.

Train to Busan doesn't necessarily set a new bar for horror movies but it's a highly entertaining and engaging zombie movie and sticks out in a time when there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of new places for zombie movies to go. The Walking Dead has a handful of spinoffs and even more in the works. Why? That show established everything it could do years ago. The better characters have long since left the show and the remaining ones are ridiculous. Why even watch it anymore? I think my advice for any up and coming filmmaker these days would be; In a world of Walking Deads, be a Train to Busan.  Nice recommendation!

A- so says Doomsday

We know, Dad...

That movie is so damn good.