@“chazumaru”#p89737 Excellent!! You know, I feel like I've been meaning to watch A Fish Called Wanda in particular for a while now.
@“chazumaru”#p89701 This is a very comprehensive list, thanks! Since the time of that post I watched the first Battles without honor and humanity as it seemed to be widely regarded as good and indeed it was, but I definitely wanted to try different vibes, so this is very helpful.
@“saddleblasters”#p87339 Late replying to this but yeah the speaking engagement came and went lol! Turns out it was mostly Hamaguchi getting involved in a media studies class at the university - he selected a student screenplay and three sets of actors and personally directed three short films where all the cast and crew apart from him were American uni undergrads. I attended a screening/Q&A for these films and… well, if they didn’t have international laureate filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s name connected to them, it’s doubtful you would perceive them as anything more than student film exercises! Which tbh was kind of inspiring in itself. It wasn’t about making something polished and enduring to put on his resume, it was about facilitating the students’ learning experience, which he made clear by orienting the Q&A toward the students (answering his questions!) rather than himself. Even though the event was open to the public, it clearly wasn’t really intended as a general talk/Q&A with Hamaguchi himself regarding his own career, so I didn’t like raise my hand or anything to try and push it in that direction. tbh I was pretty tired that day and scrolling my phone in the audience to keep myself alert - hope I didn’t come off looking rude lol.
The meditation on communication and understanding in your post feels especially fitting, since those motifs are so obviously Hamaguchi’s totalizing fixation - sometimes to a fault imo, because even _Happy Hour_ (which I’d probably agree is his best film, though there are one or two others I still haven’t seen) can feel like it’s sort of chiseling away to unfathomable depths of the same incredibly simple message again and again. I can totally understand people loving this quality of his films, though sometimes to me it feels like taking a subatomic microscope to a Hallmark card. His translator at the event made a point of noting that these student films represent his first-ever project with an English-language script and cast, the unspoken suggestion being that it won’t be his last. Given his obsession with communication and the alienation/romance of the liberal subject - which I think is a big contributing factor to his international success, Oscar inroads, etc. - it’s hard to imagine otherwise.
Having now seen _Asako I & II_, I think it may be the film of his I’d most readily rewatch - not just because it’s his most conventionally cinematic, but because I think the bizarre structure and more opaque symbolism introduced by the novel author make an interesting complement to his unadorned style - his emphasis on simple gestures becomes much more provocative in a more ethereal framework. I was sort of mixed on the specific qualities of the film that some people find offputting: it takes the foregrounding of fate and melodramatic coincidences common to all his films and stretches them to a deliberate breaking point, almost to the point where the final segment of the film feels like surrealism or magical realism for how much it just outright rejects plausibility as a realistic narrative even as Hamaguchi’s house style always gestures towards realism. I took the film’s “antagonist”, such as he is, to be almost a metaphysical embodiment of chance and capriciousness similar to Javier Bardem’s character in _No Country For Old Men_, and without actually murdering anyone (he murders _relationships_) his screen presence is almost as unnerving. I also felt it was very subtextually obvious that the film was tapping into Japan’s post-Tohoku national mood, something I suspect may have gone over the heads of many Western viewers on the other end of the 2010s.
In just a few hours will be a very special Halloween edition of the FORT90 FILM CLUB, but one that I’m not allowed to really discuss, due to the “How did you get that/should you be playing this?” nature of the line-up. But since we’re friends here, I will reveal what’s IMHO the highlight (please don’t ask me how I got a copy)…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY85IzWexWo
Stream starts at the usual time, 8PM EST, and at the usual destination…
https://www.twitch.tv/wondervillenyc
patiently waiting for Robe Of Gems and EO to be distributed beyond a European film festival. Watched terrifier 2, it was fine I guess. I’m just not scared of clowns and I don’t think a clown could kill me, I would win
Danny Boyle's Frankenstein was excellent. We saw the version with Cumberbatch as the creature, and I am very keen to see the opposite.
(Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller swapped roles every other night, with one playing the creature and the other playing Dr Frankenstein)
So with the spooky season officially over, what were people’s horror-viewing highlights?
I didn’t watch nearly as many films last month as I wanted to, due to personal/medical reasons unfortunately. From what I saw, probably my favorite first-time viewing was _Ganja & Hess_ - there’s a movie I was fully expecting to be _Blacula_-like camp, and instead it’s absolutely soul-rending and one of the best arthouse horror films I’ve ever seen. Amazingly put together and performed on an obviously tight budget. Kinda deliberately strange and boring for stretches but then it hits you with some just incredible montages and depths of pathos.
Other highlights included the original _Dracula_ and _Frankenstein_ - neither being a perfect film, but the former one of the most gorgeous films ever produced by golden age Hollywood and the latter so pregnant with thematic possibilities re: high-minded SF that I’m really sorry Cronenberg never remade it in his prime. _The Mummy_ is, surprisingly, in a similar boat. Also, _Smile_ is a dopey jumpscare movie that’s very good at being that, and I’d probably like it a lot more loudly if it wasn’t shot like a Netflix Original.
@“2501”#p89910 Lots of excellent observations on Hamaguchi. I‘m a massive massive fan (very excited by the attention Drive My Car got - a great Hamaguchi film AND an excellent Murakami adaption). Happy Hour is still my favourite but you’re onto something with Asako I & II. I‘d love him to keep making more anthology films like Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy., which he’s suggested he will do. Hamaguchi seems to be able to get to the heart of things in both long and short formats. I‘m probably ripping off someone else here, but he feels like the new Rohmer. The Green Ray is one of my other favourite films so maybe I’m projecting a bit!
Otherwise halloween passed me by this year (plus I'm not much of a horror guy), but I watched a few cool newer films recently. _On the Count of Three_ was an engaging debut from Jerrod Carmichael with some decent reflections on depression and how it traps some more than others. _Murina_ is a Croatian film getting a lot of pludits for good reason - young spirited girl (who is kinda an arsehole but that's okay) controlled by self-important patriarch past his prime, set in paradise and beautifully shot. Feels like it should be more cliche but it really works in practice. _The Banshees of Inisherin_ is a big return to form for me with Martin McDonagh - not in the least because it's a revival of an old play he'd abandoned. I wrote part of my university dissertation on the loose series this is of-a-piece with and never liked his films apart from _In Bruges_. _Banshees_ has everything that makes his plays, and that one film (namely its stars), great. Loved it!
Next for me is a full blown John Woo HK film marathon. I've only seen bits and pieces and need to correct this.
Are any folk here Letterboxd users? [This is me](https://letterboxd.com/gekiga/).
@“2501”#p91016 watched it before the official halloween season but You Won't Be Alone was great
We‘ve been watching the Harry Potter movies for the first time since…I don’t know when. But they sure are movies!
@“veck”#p91023 Y’know I haven’t actually seen any Rohmer yet (French New Wave is… very hit or miss for me) but I do remember seeing Hamaguchi quoted as saying (probably paraphrased, since he doesn’t seem like the blunt type) that one of his biggest exasperations with Western critics is their tendency to compare him to Ozu or other Japanese filmmakers when his biggest inspiration is Rohmer. And even without knowing Rohmer I can absolutely see it lol, his whole thing with long long takes, muted naturalism and semi-improvisational dialogue is pretty distinct from how much of Japanese cinema I’ve seen conceives of drama and cinematic performance!
Interesting about _Banshees_, I was ready to dismiss it because I disliked both _Three Billboards_ and _Bruges_. Hadn’t heard about _Murina_ but its synopsis sounds like _Worst Person in the World_ (which likewise kinda sounds like a self-indulgent bore on paper but in practice was one of my favorite films of last year - although partly because I thought it had a much grimmer view of its subject than anyone else I know who saw the movie did lol).
Here’s [my Boxd](https://boxd.it/xNkh)
@“edward”#p91042 Y’know even as a kid I never much cared for the movies because I thought they missed the most appealing aspect of the books, which is feeling like you’re going through an entire school year with the kids. I don’t think there’s any way at all to convey that sense chronological scope in the format of a feature-length film; if the series were adapted again today, it would be a really obvious Prestige TV candidate, although idk how they’d handle each book being longer than the last one lol
Sorry I will never talk about Harry Potter again this is a civilized community
Not personally interested in seeing Tar, but I highly recommend reading the plot summary on Wikipedia lmaooo
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@“yeso”#p91088 Not personally interested in seeing Tar, but I highly recommend reading the plot summary on Wikipedia lmaooo
Wow, as a former music academic/composer combined with my trust in your critical faculties, I'm on the edge of my seat from the first sentence already
re: the above
>!
Wow, punchline whiplash rarely gets better than that
@“2501”#p91054
It would be interesting to see a TV show done out of these books. The first two books would require a decent amount of padding but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
I think the thing that made these movies a success--besides being adaptations of the most successful books in history--is the adult cast. Just completely stacked with the best British actors of the time period. I could listen to Michael Gambon's resonant Dumbledorian monologues forever, probably, for example. But the children are...well, they're children. As they age up, most of them became very wooden actors. Always the gamble when you cast 9 year olds! Though you'd think spending your adolescence in front of a camera would make you a bit better at acting.
I bring all that up because I think a TV show would likely only get a few big actors to commit to 7 years of filming. Also, with the way Rowling has been shooting her public image in both feet, it seems unlikely that anyone will be making such an adaptation anytime soon.
Still! Would be pretty interesting to see them throw a billion dollars to make this into a TV show.
the best movie i watched this spooky season was easily cure - i watched pulse too, and i liked how directly it goes for scares, but i liked the former's reserved tone more; it felt a lot tighter.
i also really enjoyed _the innocents_, which is the 1961 adaptation of _the turn of the screw_. it digs into the darker aspects of the story, but does so in a really impressively subtle way.
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story released today and is free to watch via Roku. It's straight up full of shit and a great time. Like a more mild Walk Hard jack full of cameos.
@“leah”#p91113 Kiyoshi Kurosawa is one of my favorite directors, Pulse affected me so hard that I have yet to revisit it but I do remember some of the horror sequences being literally some of the scariest shit I've ever seen in my life.
_Cure_ is also fantastic and has an eerie apocalyptic feel which reminds me of Jung Ito or _World of Horror_ or something, amazing film.
watched bodies bodies bodies, it was lame. the usual satire about pod casts, apps, gen z self-diagnosing mh, etc etc