What’s New to Stream on Netflix for December 2019, and What’s Leaving

Some people spend their days arguing over the merits of Netflix, but the rest of us are too busy enjoying new movies, engaging series, and fun specials. It’s just one more way to re-watch the movies we already love and find new ones to cherish, and this month sees some of both hitting the service.

The complete list of movies and shows hitting (and leaving) Netflix this month — December 2019 — is below, but first I’m going to highlight a few that stand apart from the bunch.

Netflix Pick of the Month

Sweetheart (2018) washes ashore on December 25th and just might be one of your favorite Christmas presents this year. JD Dillard’s terrific little creature feature drops a fantastic Kiersey Clemons onto a deserted island which she quickly discovers is home to some kind of monster. A hungry monster to be more precise. Its reveal is a thing of beauty (and belongs in our One Perfect Shot roster), the action and suspense are legit, and it ends on a high note. As a bonus, the movie is perfectly timed at around 80 minutes making for a fun and fast treat for genre fans.

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Originals of Note, Maybe?

V Wars sinks its teeth in starting 12/5 and is a new series about a virus released from melting ice caps that transforms people into blood-sucking vampires. Only Ian Somerhalder — star of the CW’s The Vampire Diaries coincidentally enough — has a chance of stopping the infection before it’s too late. Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story breaks up on 12/6 and delivers the acclaimed portrayal of of two people falling out of love. Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson are both getting rave reviews. Michael Bay’s 6 Underground blows shit up starting on 12/13, and while it’s still weird that a new Bay movie is so close with so little fanfare I’m still hoping for a fun time. The Two Popes go to war (probably not accurate) starting 12/20 with Jonathan Pryce and Anthony Hopkins talking god stuff. And finally, The Neighbor (aka El vecino) comes knocking on 12/31, and while the story about a slacker who gains powers from an alien is interesting the more curious draw is director Nacho Vigalondo (Timecrimes, 2007).

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The Oldest Film Hitting Netflix This Month

One of the constant criticisms against the streaming service is the lack of older films and a deference towards newer titles. It’s a valid argument, but each month I choose to take a positive route with it and highlight the oldest movie that’s hitting Netflix, and December’s title is from way back in… 1995. GoldenEye was Pierce Brosnan’s first go as James Bond, and it arrives at the end of the month on 12/31. Netflix has your back if you’re planning a marathon too, as the day also brings Brosnan’s other three Bond films — Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), The World Is Not Enough (1999), and Die Another Day (2002).

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It’s Like Netflix Knows My Weakness

Dead Kids [Netflix Film] drops on 12/1 and is already on my must-watch list thanks to the title alone. Look, I like when genre films kill off kids, and I’m not sorry. It’s a bold move, always, and lets viewers know that no one is safe which in turn adds a dark energy by default. This Filipino film, the first Netflix Original for the country, is about teenagers — so not actually kids — but still offers up a hopefully compelling tale of bad choices and the young corpses they leave behind.

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The Complete List

December 1st
The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl (2005)
Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002)
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)
A Cinderella Story: Christmas Wish (2019)
Cut Bank (2014)
Dead Kids [Netflix Film]
Eastsiders: Season 4
Malcolm X (1992)
Searching for Sugar Man (2012)
Sweet Virginia (2017)
The Tribes of Palos Verdes (2017)

December 2nd
Nightflyers – Season 1
Team Kaylie – Part 2

December 3rd
Especial de Natal Porta dos Fundos: A Primeira Tentacao de Cristo [Netflix Film]
Tiffany Haddish: Black Mitzvah [Netflix Original]
War on Everyone (2016)

December 4th
The Last O.G.: Season 2
Let’s Dance [Netflix Film]
Los Briceno [Netflix Original]
Magic for Humans – Season 2 [Netflix Original]

December 5th
Apache: La vida de Carlos Tevez [Netflix Original]
A Christmas Prince: The Royal Baby [Netflix Film]
Greenleaf: Season 4
Home for Christmas [Netflix Original]
V Wars [Netflix Original]

December 6th
Astronomy Club: The Sketch Show [Netflix Original]
The Chose One – Season 2 [Netflix Original]
The Confession Killer [Netflix Documentary]
Fuller House – Season 5 [Netflix Original]
Glow Up [Netflix Original]
Marriage Story [Netflix Original]
Spirit Riding Free: The Spirit of Christmas [Netflix Family]
Teasing Master Takagi-san – Season 2 [Netflix Anime]
Three Days of Christmas [Netflix Original]
Triad Princess [Netflix Original]
Virgin River [Netflix Original]

December 8th
From Paris with Love (2010)

December 9th
A Family Reunion Christmas [Netflix Family]
It Comes at Night (2017)

December 10th
Michelle Wolf: Joke Show [Netflix Original]
Outlander – Season 3

December 11th
The Sky Is Pink (2019)

December 12th
Especial de Natal Porta dos Fundos [Netflix Film]
Jack Whitehall: Christmas with My Father [Netflix Original]

December 13th
6 Underground [Netflix Film]

December 15th
Dil Dhadakne Do (2015)
A Family Man (2016)
Karthik Calling Karthik (2010)

December 16th
Burlesque (2010)
The Danish Girl (2015)
The Magicians – Season 4

December 17th
Ronny Chieng: Asian Comedian Destroys America [Netflix Original]

December 18th
Don’t F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer [Netflix Documentary]
Soundtrack [Netflix Original]

December 19th
After the Raid [Netflix Documentary]
Twice Upon a Time [Netflix Original]
Ultraviolet – Season 2 [Netflix Original]

December 20th
The Two Popes [Netflix Film]
The Witcher [Netflix Original]

December 22nd
Private Practice – Seasons 1-6

December 23rd
Transformers Rescue Bots Academy – Season 1

December 24th
Carole & Tuesday – Part 2 [Netflix Anime]
Como caido del cielo [Netflix Film]
Crash Landing on You [Netflix Original]
John Mulaney & the Sack Lunch Bunch [Netflix Original]
Lost in Space – Season 2 [Netflix Original]
Terrace House: Tokyo 2019-2020 – Part 2 [Netflix Original]

December 25th
Sweetheart (2019)

December 26th
The App [Netflix Film]
Le Bazar de la Charite [Netflix Original]
Fast & Furious Spy Racers [Netflix Family]
You – Season 2 [Netflix Original]

December 27th
The Gift [Netflix Original]
Kevin Hart: Don’t F**k This Up [Netflix Documentary]
The Secret Life of Pets 2 (2019)

December 28th
Hot Gimmick: Girl Meets Boy [Netflix Film]

December 29th
Lawless (2012)

December 30th
Alexa & Katie – Season 3 [Netflix Family]
The Disastrous Life of Saiki K: Reawakened [Netflix Anime]

December 31st
The Degenerates – Season 2 [Netflix Original]
Die Another Day (2002)
GoldenEye (1995)
Heartbreakers (2001)
The Neighbor [Netflix Original]
Red Dawn (2012)
Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
The World Is Not Enough (1999)
Yanxi Palace: Princess Adventures [Netflix Original]

What’s Leaving?

Leaving December 1st
Yoga Hosers

Leaving December 2nd
Africa – Season 1
Blue Planet II – Season 1
Frozen Planet: On Thin Ice
Frozen Planet – Season 1
Frozen Planet: The Epic Journey
Life
Life On Location
Life Story
Nature’s Great Events – Series 1
Nature’s Great Events: Diaries – Series 1
Planet Earth II
Planet Earth – Season 1
The Blue Planet: A Natural History of the Oceans – Season 1
The Hunt – Season 1
The Making of Frozen Planet – Series 1

Leaving December 4th
Thor: Ragnarok

Leaving December 11th
Get Santa

Leaving December 14th
Beyblade: Metal Fusion: Season 1
Merlin: Season 1-5

Leaving December 15th
Helix – Season 2

Leaving December 18th
Miss Me This Christmas
You Can’t Fight Christmas

Leaving December 19th
George of the Jungle 2

Leaving December 25th
Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown – Seasons 7-11
Kurt Seyit ve Şura: Season 1
Star Wars: Episode VIII: The Last Jedi

Leaving December 31st
About a Boy
Billy Elliot
Black Hawk Down
Christmas with the Kranks
The Crow
Daddy Day Care
The Dark Crystal
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Frasier – Season 1-10
Frasier – The Final Season
Jackie Brown
Leap Year
Mona Lisa Smile
The Pink Panther
Pulp Fiction
Rain Man
Rocky
Rocky II
Rocky III
Rocky IV
Rocky V
Schindler’s List
Tears of the Sun
Wet Hot American Summer
White Christmas
Winter’s Bone
XXX: State of the Union

Follow all of our monthly streaming guides.

The post What’s New to Stream on Netflix for December 2019, and What’s Leaving appeared first on Film School Rejects.

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Watch ‘The Irishman,’ Then Watch These Movies

Whatever way you want to view it, whether theatrically or streaming in one sitting on Netflix or broken up into sections when you have the time, you must watch Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman. The 209-minute historical gangster epic is really the filmmaker’s last word on the genre he’s most associated with, and it’s a satisfying piece of cinema on a multitude of levels. To achieve such a work, Scorsese owes a lot to certain masterpieces of the past. And ever the cineaste, he’s not shy about discussing those influences. Below I’ve compiled the titles he has cited in order to recommend them as further suggested viewing. And I’ve also added some personally selected picks that go well with his latest.

Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese (2019)

Scorsese is having quite a year. He inspired one of the highest-grossing movies of 2019 (Joker) and executive-produced one of the best movies of 2019 (Uncut Gems) and he also directed one of the best nonfiction features of 2019. Nominated for multiple Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards, Rolling Thunder Revue is difficult to define. Like The Irishman, the fellow Netflix Original is based on a true story but contains a lot of fictional or disputable details. Bob Dylan is a mythmaking unreliable narrator same as Frank Sheeran. Some of the characters aren’t real. Some of the real people, such as Sharon Stone, aren’t really part of the history being shared. And a lot of the material is manipulated, especially in the contexts being presented. However, the archival concert footage, shot during Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue tour in the mid-’70s, is authentic and amazing, and the film does document a perspective and feeling of the events both remembered and captured more than 40 years ago.

Stream Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese on Netflix

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Casino (1995)

Speaking of Sharon Stone, here’s a movie for which she received an Oscar nomination. I’ve recommended Scorsese’s 1990 gangster classic Goodfellas plenty of times in these Movies to Watch After lists, but Casino doesn’t get a lot of love because it’s not thought of as an influence on modern crime films the same way. In addition to being the filmmaker’s last feature directorial collaboration with either Robert De Niro or Joe Pesci before The Irishman, Casino is also his last historical gangster picture in the vein of Goodfellas and the new movie at hand. Most of the characters here are fictionalized, however, including the Alan King role of Andy Stone, who is based on Jimmy Hoffa associate Allen Dorfman, portrayed in The Irishman by Jake Hoffman. Also, the late comedian Don Rickles has a major supporting role in Casino and is now portrayed by Jim Norton in The Irishman and the late singer Jerry Vale plays himself in Casino (and Goodfellas) but is portrayed by Steven Van Zandt in The Irishman. I also recommend The Good Shepherd (2006), which De Niro directed and features the previous reunion between him and Pesci while also dealing with fictionalized versions of famous gangsters and political figures that overlap with The Irishman.

Stream Casino via Starz

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The Piano (1993)

There are plenty of movies to recommend for past groupings of actors from The Irishman, from Mean Streets to Heat. The Piano counts because it stars both Harvey Keitel and Anna Paquin. But the main reason for its inclusion here is because of the criticisms about Paquin’s role in The Irishman. It’s the same thing that happened earlier this year with Margot Robbie in Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. The actresses don’t have a lot of lines. But that doesn’t mean they’re slight roles or weak performances. As Peggy Sheeran, Paquin’s silence is significant. Let’s not forget that for decades actors delivered performances without any possibility for dialogue. Also, let’s not forget about Holly Hunter’s Oscar-winning performance in The Piano as a mute woman. Paquin also won an Oscar for this movie at age 11 as the woman’s daughter and interpreter. The Piano also was just named the greatest film directed by a woman.

Rent or buy The Piano from Amazon

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Hoffa (1992)

The Irishman isn’t a biopic about Jimmy Hoffa, but the famous Teamster leader does play a major part in the story. Hoffa has been portrayed a number of times in the past. Most notably, Robert Blake played him in the 1983 miniseries Blood Feud, which goes deeper into his battles with Robert Kennedy, and Jack Nicholson played him in the David Mamet-scripted and Danny De Vito-helmed biopic Hoffa. Al Pacino is sure to follow in their shoes and be the third actor nominated for a Golden Globe for the part. And here’s another fun fact: both Scorsese and De Vito have the same birthday, November 17th. In Hoffa, the titular labor icon is seen gunned down by an unknown hitman played by Frank Whalley, though at the time Hoffa’s death and disappearance were still a total mystery. Sheeran wouldn’t claim to have been the killer until a decade later, on his deathbed. Even that’s not confirmed, though. In the 2018 Fox TV documentary Riddle: The Search for James R. Hoffa, the FBI offered a statement of “no comment” when asked about their recent DNA tests to determine what happened and whodunnit.

Rent or buy Hoffa from Amazon

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JFK (1991)

Oliver Stone, who was originally supposed to direct Hoffa, helmed this masterwork of conspiracy theory mythology. While The Irishman also makes claims about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, that story is also still an open book as far as the truth goes. When JFK was made, theorizing about what actually happened at Dealy Plaza on November 22, 1963, was at its highest peak since Jim Garrison’s investigation throughout the 1960s following the official results of the Warren Commission. Kevin Costner portrays Garrison in this depiction of that investigation, and there are interesting overlaps with The Irishman such as the latter’s reference to David Ferrie, who is played in JFK by Joe Pesci. Scorsese’s movie is a straightforward telling of history, including the Bay of Pigs invasion and the deaths of the Kennedys, from a sole unreliable narrator. JFK is an unsolvable puzzle representing the enigmatic search for truth in the president’s murder.

Rent or buy JFK from Amazon

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The Shootist (1976)

Seen on a marquee in a scene in The Irishman, The Shootist is the final movie starring John Wayne, who died a few years later. It’s a perfect movie for Scorsese to nod to because it’s about an old man reflecting on his life within the context of a climactic entry of a prominent movie genre. In The Irishman, De Niro plays a real man looking back at his life of crime and historical events that figure into and inspired many other crime films, including some starring De Niro in his younger days. The Shootist features clips of Wayne in his younger days starring in classic Western films. Both actors are really associated with the respective genres. A number of reviews of The Irishman have pointed out the “Easter egg” referencing The Shootist and acknowledge the link between the movies as far as their dealing with characters in times of reckoning and their genre eulogizing. Scorsese has made connections between gangster films and Westerns before, most memorably with the final shot of Goodfellas paying homage to the final shot of The Great Train Robbery (1903).

Stream The Shootist on Amazon Prime Video

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Le Doulos (1962) and Le Deuxième Souffle (1966)

Ahead of the theatrical release of The Irishman, Scorsese was interviewed by fellow filmmaker and New York cinema icon Spike Lee. Part of their conversation covered the movies that influenced Scorsese’s new movie, and The Film Stage relayed a number of quotes from that event. A couple of the films mentioned are by French crime film master Jean-Pierre Melville, including the heist film Le Doulos (aka Doulos: The Finger Man) and the gangster flick Le Deuxième Souffle (aka Second Breath). Both follow criminals just out of prison, though the character is released in the former and an escapee in the latter. Scorsese says that he showed them to his director of photographer, Rodrigo Prieto, not for visual reference but for the tone of the new film.

“The tone of the movie, it had to be contemplative and an epic, but it had to be an intimate epic. I showed a couple of Jean-Pierre Melville films, ‘Le Doulos’ and ‘Le Deuxième Souffle,’ with Jean-Paul Belmondo [in the latter], both of those pictures. It’s a very different world, but I liked the understatement of it.”

Stream Le Doulos on Kanopy
Stream Le Deuxième Souffle on The Criterion Channel

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Psycho (1960)

What does Alfred Hitchcock’s horror classic have to do with The Irishman? Besides the fact that they’re both about murderers, the story of Norman Bates dressing up as his mother and slashing a woman in the shower isn’t the most obvious of influences. But Psycho informed the sound of Scorsese’s new movie. Here’s what he told Spike Lee and their audience at the DGA Theater last month:

“I made choices to take most of the music out anyway, because of the methodic nature of who he is, Frank, and once he has to do this terrible thing, we want to see him go step by step with it. Take them all the way through, the way he feels when he’s doing it. One has to be so careful with film music. Very often it tells you how to feel. But what if you just are uncomfortably watching this guy? He takes his glasses off, gives it to Joe, gets in the plane. There’s no music when the plane takes off. It’s an air of finality that we have to witness this, the way it happens, and then witness after. There’s a wonderful thing, the clean-up scene after the shower scene in ‘Psycho.’ I mean, there’s Bernard Herrmann music there, but there’s something about when we first saw that film at the DeMille theater in the first week in a midnight screening, everybody’s screaming, the fact that we’re back in there. He’s just killed the lead of the movie and he’s cleaning up. What are we watching? The quotidian nature of it. I thought the whole last hour of the picture should be that way. That’s why a lot of the music was pulled away.”

Stream Psycho via Starz

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Inside the Mafia (1959)

There are so many famous and semi-famous gangsters in The Irishman, whether they’re major characters or just briefly shown as extras (typically credited with a caption noting their cause of death) or assassination victims. One of the most well-known mob hits of all time is depicted in Scorsese’s film, that of Albert Anastasia (Gary Pastore) in the barbershop of the Park Sheraton Hotel. Two years after that real incident, the film noir B-movie Inside the Mafia opened with a barbershop-set shooting modeled on Anastasia’s killing and the movie is then loosely based on the historic gangster summit known as the Apalachin Meeting.

Other movies worth seeing for Irishman crossovers include Kill the Irishman (2011), in which Paul Sorvino plays Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno (played by Domenick Lombardozzi in The Irishman), Legend (2015), in which Chazz Palminteri plays Angelo Bruno (Harvey Keitel in The Irishman), and a double feature of The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight (1971), in which Jerry Orbach plays a fictionalization of Joe Gallo (Sebastian Maniscalco in The Irishman) [Fun fact: Orbach was with Gallo at the Copacabana the night of the gangster’s murder] and Crazy Joe (1974), in which Peter Boyle plays Gallo through to his death at the clam house. There’s also the upcoming Mob Town, which I haven’t seen, that not only deals with the Apalachin Meeting but also stars Gary Pastore as Albert Anastasia, making it almost like a genuine spinoff of The Irishman.

Stream Inside the Mafia on Amazon Prime Video

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Rififi (1955)

“Another one was Jules Dassin’s Rififi,” Scorsese says in the interview. “There was a period there where a lot of those films were coming over here.” He doesn’t get into how this relates to or influenced The Irishman, but it’s clear between Rififi and the Melvilles and the next entry in this list that Scorsese was just focused on French crime films, even those by American directors in exile after being blacklisted. Dassin also co-stars in Rififi as one of a foursome of criminals (one of which, of course, is newly out of prison) who attempt an “impossible” jewel heist. The act itself is depicted long and slow and silent and has become one of the most influential of its kind, echoed in many movies since. The heist has also been copied by real-life criminals, as well.

Buy the Criterion Collection Blu-ray of Rififi from Amazon

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Grisbi (1954)

Another French crime film, Touchez Pas au Grisbi — or simply Grisbi — seems to have been a big inspiration for Scorsese gangster pictures through the years and influenced a number of elements of The Irishman. In the quote below he mentions how Jean Gabin in Grisbi inspired the performance and direction of De Niro in Casino, but look at Gabin in this movie and you’ll also see a resemblance to De Niro in The Irishman. Maybe he’s a mix of De Niro and Robert Mitchum (now, there’s a good tie-in to Scorsese’s Cape Fear remake, too). Here’s Scorsese on Grisbi in conversation with Spike Lee:

“Then I showed a film called ‘Touchez Pas au Grisbi,’ which means ‘Don’t touch the loot,’ which is a very famous early ’50s French gangster film with Jean Gabin. When I was shooting Bob in ‘Casino,’ I felt he was taking on the stature of a late-to-middle-age Gabin. He had a lot of power to him but he had a serenity to him, too, and a coolness. Bob, I felt, was getting that way in ‘Casino.’ ‘Grisbi’ has a similar [theme] in the sense that they are older gangsters in Paris and they are getting involved in stuff they don’t want to get involved with. It’s really the tone, but I like the Gabin feeling of his deportment, how he presented himself. In fact, we used some of the harmonica music from ‘Grisbi’ in the film and Robbie Robertson did the harmonica based on the French noir music of the early ’50s [including ‘Rififi’].”

Stream Grisbi on Kanopy

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Los Olvidados (1950)

The earliest film cited by Scorsese is Luis Bunuel’s Los Olvidados (aka The Young and the Damned), from the filmmaker’s Mexico period. Also a crime film, it’s set in the slums of Mexico City and concerns young criminals — one of them, like those in the French films above, is recently out of detention (albeit the juvenile kind). Scorsese brings up this one while discussing one of the cameras used to shoot The Irishman, particularly for slow-motion sequences. He probably could have named any early example of film employing the effect but Los Olvidados specifically seems to have stuck with him the most from his youth.

“That slow motion is a Phantom; the camera is a Phantom. I’ve been obsessed with slow-motion since I can remember, since I first saw films. I guess for me, the slow-motion dreams in ‘Los Olvidados’ are something that stayed with me for a long time. I love the way that people’s expressions change and the movement of the flesh on the arms. That sort of thing. It’s very, very high speed this camera, Phantom. I felt like it would be only two places: the Joe Colombo shooting in Columbus Circle and the wedding itself. Because the wedding is a funeral. And the Colombo thing gave me a chance… There’s something about… people laugh, ‘Oh, mob hits, and that sort of thing,’ but the pain of it, the suffering of all the people around, you see all their faces. You see the family, the wife screaming. You see the hands grabbing the gun. It’s almost like Biblical tableaus that I was going for. I think that camera gave it to me, but one has to be quite sparing with it, and I like the trance-like effect.”

Stream Los Olvidados on Amazon Prime Video

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The Black Hand (1906) and The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912)

The Irishman appears to be Scorsese’s final word on the genre he’s mostly associated with, so here are two of the first words on gangster cinema. The Black Hand (aka The Black Hand: True Story of a Recent Occurrence in the Italian Quarter of New York) is a one-reeler by Wallace McCutcheon for the Biograph Company and like The Irishman begins with characters involved in the meat industry. It’s focused on the victims of gangster-related crimes, which are ultimately dealt with by the police. Hardly the sort of story the genre wound up romanticizing. D.W. Griffith’s The Musketeers of Pig Alley is also a one-reeler but a little bit longer and is considered one of the last significant works of that format before Griffith and others began making features shortly afterward. The Musketeers of Pig Alley is, more than The Black Hand, considered the kickoff of the genre, perhaps because while it focuses on victims of criminals at first, it then deals with rival crime organizations in a gang war mostly set in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Also, the main gangster is let off the hook at the end. And maybe real gangsters played extras. As a result of its cultural significance, it was added to the National Film Registry a few years ago.

Stream The Black Hand via Wikipedia Commons
Stream The Musketeers of Pig Alley via Wikipedia Commons

The post Watch ‘The Irishman,’ Then Watch These Movies appeared first on Film School Rejects.

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Women in charge: Highlights from Torino

 Beanpole (2019).

DB here:

Every day we’ve spent at the Torino Film Festival has yielded us fine and sometimes superb film experiences. . Herewith some examples, all probably coming to a screen (large, small) near you.

 

Extracurricular melodrama

Wet Season (2019).

From Anthony Chen (Ilo Ilo, 2013) comes a woman’s drama of professional and personal travail. Ling is a Malaysian teacher working in a Singapore boys’ school. She’s trying to get pregnant through in vitro fertilization , although her husband is reluctant. She takes care of her elderly father-in-law while pressing her mostly indifferent students to pass their Chinese examinations. Things take a drastic turn when, just as Ling’s husband drifts away from her, one boy becomes violently infatuated with her.

Poised and mild-mannered, Wet Season handles its melodramatic material with restraint. For instance, there’s the careful use of Ling’s car. She and her husband are introduced driving to work together, but the shots don’t show their faces. It’s an effective expression of their empty marriage. Similar shots recur throughout the film.

Denying us the standard view forces us to pay attention to the dialogue. Lest this be thought a simply byproduct of production constraints (it’s easier to shoot a rainy drive from the back seat), later we see Ling in a more standard angle.

The new framing allows us to see her accusing glance at Wei Lun.

And still other uses of the car enable Chen to stress Ling’s reactions to developments in the drama.

Here, as so often in film, simple but shrewd production choices can build strong emotional impact. By the end, when the typhoon has finally blown over, Ling can confront the future with some hope.

 

Horror diva

As indicated in our previous entry, the guest of honor for Torino’s horror retrospective was the star of 1960s Italian (and other) frightfests, Barbara Steele. She received the Gran Primio Torino on the opening night of the festival. Several of her films were shown, reminding me of the delirious ways that Italian filmmakers revised the genre. Take the two features I saw.

Mario Bava’s Black Sunday (La maschera del demonio, 1960), which came out the same year as Psycho, is in some ways more shocking. The opening, in which a spike-studded iron mask is pounded bloodily into the face of a witch still makes you jump. What follows is essentially an old-dark-house plot, with one character after another prowling around a castle and getting killed off by the undead witch Asa and her brother. Asa targets her descendant, the beautiful Katia, in the belief that taking her blood will grant her immorality.

Barbara, with bat-wing eyelashes and magnificently tousled hair, plays both Asa and Katia. In a bravura image, Bava uses visual effects to give us the two women in a fine widescreen composition.

The film’s endless play of highlights and shadow is really something. Although I’ve seen it before, I never appreciated its visual splendor until I encountered this DCP restoration. Kristin pointed out that we can see how the eyelights on Asa are flicked on and off so that she seems throbbing with supernatural energy.

Two years later, Barbara made for director Riccardo Freda The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (L’Orribile Segreto del Dr. Hichcock). It’s close to 1940s Hollywood Gothics in centering on uxoricide. But in a typical giallo fantastic twist, the husband who dispatches one wife accidentally tries to kill a second to revive the first. There are 1940s motifs such as the sinister housekeeper (Rebecca), the dominating portraits of Wife #1, the efforts to gaslight Wife #2, and even a glowing glass of milk (Notorious) with which Dr. H hopes to dispatch his new wife–played, of course, by Ms Steele.

Freda has recourse to the fog and sinister noises of Black Sunday, but Bava’s labyrinthine secret passages and torture chambers are replaced by rooms stuffed with sinister chachkies. And Hichcock is in Technicolor, so Freda gives the dank Victorian parlors a subdued color design. Barbara is right at home here too, rolling her eyes apprehensively as she’s given the poisoned milk.

In all, the Torino horror retrospective was a bracing reminder of a genre that has shaped popular cinema to this day. The presence of Ms Steele was a wonderful bonus.

 

Cops, moles, and femmes fatales

The Whistlers (La Gomera, 2019).

When a film is grounded in a basic genre formula, much of your enjoyment comes from seeing not only fresh twists of plot but also felicities of sound and image. That was my response to Corneliu Porumboiu’s The Whistlers (La Gomera), a quietly flashy neo-noir.

Everything is there. We have the intricate schemes of cops, crooks, and everybody in between in pursuit of mattresses stuffed with cash. There’s the tired, seen-too-much cop who works for the gang, not least because of the wiles of a stupendously gorgeous femme fatale. There are the Eurotrash thugs and heavies supervised by a calculating boss, and flashbacks that lead you to wonder who exactly is conning whom.

But Porumboiu tinkers with the familiar narrative mechanics. In an age of cellphones and video surveillance, the crooks must communicate in a frankly analog code: they whistle their messages, disguised as birdsong. The tough supervisor who suspects our protagonist is a mole isn’t the usual overbearing male, but rather a woman with her own femme fatale streak. She’s as suspicious of surveillance as the crooks, stepping outside her bugged office to negotiate extralegal stings with her staff.

Likewise, Porumboiu gives up the “free-camera” straying and fumblings that we see in so many films these days. He locks down his camera to create precise, radiant images. Here’s Gilda, yes, you heard that right, smoking and waiting for trouble.

It’s a pleasure to see crisp frame entrances and exits, along with tracking shots reserved for climactic moments, as when the gang steps into a police ambush mounted on a disused film set. A well-judged sense of framing enables an  overhead shot in which the dark blood of a dead man at a work station flows into the mouse and lights it up in a discreet crimson flash.

The Whistlers isn’t as rich, I think, as the director’s earlier policier, Detective, Adjective, but it’s  a satisfying genre exercise. It yields dry wit (sleek fashionista gangsters struggling to load mattresses into a small car) and surprise twists–not least the epilogue, which brings back the coded whistles in an amusing sound gag.

 

Women at war

Beanpole (2019).

Another way to put it: The Whistlers is that rarity today, the thoroughly “designed” film. Here all the stylistic and narrative choices stand sharply revealed as part of what we are to notice, and enjoy. (Other instances: the Coens, Almodóvar.) Another example at Torino is the already widely-praised Russian drama by Kantemir Balagov, Beanpole.

Leningrad: World War II is winding down, and two women must face the postwar world. Iya and Masha have been gunners at the front. Iya was invalided out because of episodes of “freezing,” seizing up in a sort of paralyzed trance and making clicking sounds until the spasm eventually passes. Now she works in a hospital patching up wounded soldiers and taking care of Masha’s child, born at the front. Masha eventually returns and takes a job at the hospital as well.

But their friendship suffers through a horrific accident that plunges the towering and slender Iya, the beanpole  (dilda, “tall girl”) of the title, into shame and depression. Masha, more aggressive in remaking herself as the war ends, drives the second half of the film. She begins a pragmatic relationship with the weak soldier Sasha. When he brings her home to meet his parents, proud members of the Bolshevik bourgeoisie, she supplies all her backstory about life on the front that fills in crucial gaps.

Beanpole‘s few characters–the two women, Sasha, and a weary doctor supervising the clinic–throb with a Dostoevksian intensity. With her paralysis and quiet mournfulness, Iya recalls Prince Myshkin; some shots virtually sanctify her.

As in Dostoevsky’s novels, nearly every scene is worked up to a furious emotional pitch. The nosebleeds that seem to pass contagiously among characters is virtually a sign of passions under pressure.

The tension is carried through lengthy, often silent stares shared between characters thrusting themselves at one another. Balagov relies on close-ups and tight two-shots running very long; there are about 325 shots in the film’s 131 minutes. Here Iya helps a dying soldier to smoke in a perfectly composed two-shot in the wide format.

Without prettifying Leningrad during and after the siege, the film’s pictorial design is ravishing. The main sets are designed to complement one another. The hospital is bathed in a creamy light, while the night streets radiate a golden glow.

The apartment Iya and Masha share is ripe in dark greens and reds, the result of years of tearing away layers of wallpaper. (See our top image.) The doctor’s apartment offers a warmer, less distraught balance of reds and greens.

The palatial home of Sasha’s parents yields another register, one of tidy, frosty elegance.

And the clinic is given a dose of red and green by the painted walls and the presence of little Pashka.

The pictorial harmonies and modulations are just one part of this gripping, exhilarating film. Beanpole will be distributed by Kino Lorber in the US and Mubi in the UK.

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We wish to thank Jim Healy, Emanuela Martini, Giaime Alonge, Andrea Alonge, Silvia Saitta, Lucrezia Viti, Helleana Grussu, and all their colleagues for their kind help with our visit.

For more Torino images, visit our Instagram page.

Cynthia Hichcock (Barbara Steele), trapped in a coffin by her husband, in The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962).

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‘The Mandalorian’ Explained: Chapter Four

Since its inception, Star Wars has been a celebration of cinema. George Lucas collected his passion for Flash Gordon serials, Harryhausen creature features, World War II sagas, Westerns, and Akira Kurosawa adventures and mashed them together into one epic sci-fi veneration. All films stem from those that came before, but if you want to stay true to the spirit of Star Wars, those influences must be worn obviously and proudly.

So far, since Lucasfilm fell under the Disney banner, the new filmmakers who have taken the reins have done a solid job of replicating that George Lucas celebratory filter. J.J. Abrams, Rian Johnson, Gareth Edwards, and Ron Howard splattered their entires with a feast of references and reverences. However, none have been as bold or blatant as showrunner Jon Favreau and The Mandalorian.

As a result, your enjoyment with each entry is determined by how much you appreciate such flagrant fanboy behavior. If you’re like me and you take possibly too much pleasure from eye-spying nods and winks to continuity and movie history, the show is a blast. If this behavior is exhausting or simply dull, then the latest chapter of The Mandalorian might have lost you from the very first sequence.

Chapter Four, “Sanctuary,” opens on a new planet: Sorgan. We meet a group of farmers sifting through their shallow rivers to acquire large piles of blue krill. The scene is serene and certainly cannot last. A rumble from the nearby forest spreads alarm through their ranks, and a group of puppy-faced Klatoonian pirates ambushes their spoils. We’ve seen these savage killers before, serving as guards in Jabba’s palace and as light snacks for the Sarlacc pit in Return of the Jedi. They’re no-good rapscallions.

A casual film lover doesn’t have to achieve much arithmetic to foresee the entire arc of the episode. We already know that Mando (Pedro Pascal) and his green-eared bounty child are on the run and looking for a hideout. One plus one equals Mando will land on Sorgan, happen upon the villagers, and since his good nature is already quite full and inviting after last week’s heroic decision, the bounty hunter will aid in the village’s plight against the Klatoonians.

We’re Star Wars fans, and that means, even if we never bothered to watch them, we have a basic understanding of Akira Kurosawa’s movies. Welcome to the umpteenth remake of Seven Samurai.

This is not the first time Star Wars has aped this particular movie either. A very similar scenario played out in the Clone Wars animated series episode “Bounty Hunters.” In that storyline, Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Ahsoka Tano team-up with four bounty hunters to aid in the protection of a village against a raiding party lead by reoccurring scumbag Hondo Ohnaka. Just as Kurosawa’s seven samurai train their villagers in the ways of combat, so do Skywalker, Kenobi, and Tano.

Wash, rinse, repeat: “Chapter Four: Sanctuary.”

Also similar to The Clone Wars episode, The Mandalorian does not offer much time to travel the same plot that Kurosawa traversed for nearly three and a half hours. In less than 40 minutes, this episode plops Mando on Sorgan, introduces a new ally in the shape of ex-Rebel full-time badass Cara Dune (Gina Carano), races to empathize with the villagers using your knowledge of previous pop culture as emotional shorthand, and wages glorious battle against the Klatoonians. When all is said and done, Mando is still on the run from the Imperial Client (Werner Herzog), and off to the next watering hole.

What the episode does not do is further the arc established by the previous three chapters. When the credits roll, it’s hard not to feel like you just experienced a bit of a stall, and you’re left wondering exactly what The Mandalorian as a series has to deliver. At the end of Chapter Three, “The Sin,” the series could have gone anywhere. At the end of the Bryce Dallas Howard-helmed “Sanctuary,” the series could still go anywhere, but if Chapter Five opens and we get another stall, oof, that will be quite the disappointment. Maybe The Mandalorian should have been a movie after all.

“This is the nature of war,” states Takashi Shimura in Seven Samurai.  “By protecting others, you save yourself. If you only think of yourself, you’ll destroy yourself.” What Kurosawa does for The Mandalorian is to simplify Mando’s transformation from outlaw killer to noble antihero. We already love him because he picked up the baby and rescued him from the hateful experiments of the Empire, but now we see the mercenary as a traditional hero. He’s a reluctant defender of the weak. We respect him and can now cheer for him.

Star Wars roots its violence in “The Good Fight” proposed by Word War II propaganda and its resulting fictional storylines. Killing is a wicked act but sometimes a necessary one. Even a benevolent and great Jedi Master like Yoda will lead a squadron of clone troopers into combat if the soul of the galaxy is at risk. War can be honorable. The messaging is problematic, but not new.

Mando is a child of war. His parents fell before droids and the orders that programmed them. After four chapters, he appears to be the Batman of the Star Wars franchise. He experienced pain so that he can prevent that pain from happening to others. At the start of the series, his mission was his clan. Now, apparently, his mission is all who befall oppression. Like Han Solo before him, he’s gone from rogue to rebel.

The post ‘The Mandalorian’ Explained: Chapter Four appeared first on Film School Rejects.

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First Trailer for 'True History of the Kelly Gang' Starring George MacKay

"Be who you were meant to be!" Memento International has debuted the first official trailer for Australian indie drama True History of the Kelly Gang, which just premiered at the Toronto Film Festival a few months ago. This is the latest feature from Australian filmmaker Justin Kurzel, of The Snowtown Murders and Macbeth previously, and it's a re-envisioning of the tall tale of an Australian bush-ranger named Ned Kelly and his gang as they flee from the authorities during the 1870s. If you're from Australia, you probably know the story, but if not - this flips the whole story on its head anyway. "Youth and tragedy collide in the Kelly Gang, and at the beating heart of this tale is the fractured and powerful love story between a mother and a son." Starring George MacKay as Ned Kelly, Essie Davis as his mother Ellen Kelly, plus Russell Crowe, Nicholas Hoult, Thomasin McKenzie, Sean Keenan, Earl Cave, Orlando Schwerdt, and Charlie Hunnam. This certainly looks very stylish and unique - you might want to keep an eye on this one.

Here's the official trailer (+ poster) for Justin Kurzel's True History of the Kelly Gang, from YouTube:

Inspired by Peter Carey’s Man Booker prize winning novel, True History of the Kelly Gang shatters the mythology of the notorious icon to reveal the essence behind the life of Ned Kelly and force a country to stare back into the ashes of its brutal past. Spanning the younger years of Ned’s life to the time leading up to his death, the film explores the blurred boundaries between what is bad and what is good, and the motivations for the demise of its hero. True History of the Kelly Gang is directed by Australian filmmaker Justin Kurzel, director of the films The Snowtown Murders, Macbeth, and Assassin's Creed previously, and one other short film. The screenplay is written by Shaun Grant, adapted from Peter Carey's novel of the same name first published in 2000. This premiered at the Toronto Film Festival earlier this fall. Memento Films will debut True History of the Kelly Gang in UK cinemas starting February 2020, more openings to come. There's still no US release date setup yet, stay tuned for updates. First impression? Who's interested?

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Official Australian Trailer for Beloved French Film 'The Extraordinary'

"His organization responds to acute needs." Madman Films out of Australia has debuted an official English-subtitled trailer for the acclaimed, beloved French drama (originally) called The Specials. Apparently for the Australian release they've retitled it to The Extraordinary, which sort of still works I guess, but okay whatever. No need for a new name. This is from the same two talented French filmmakers who made The Intouchables, and this time they tell the story of two based-on-real-people social support caregivers for autistic children and teens. Vincent Cassel and Reda Kateb star as two of the most caring, loving guys you'll ever meet - as Bruno and Malik. The full cast also includes Hélène Vincent, Bryan Mialoundama. Alban Ivanov, Benjamin Lesieur, Marco Locatelli, and Catherine Mouchet. It's a wonderful film. I saw it at the San Sebastian Film Festival and loved everything about it - read my glowing review. It truly is a "special", warm, inspiring feature. The score you hear in this is by Grandbrothers and it's also in the film.

Official Australian trailer (+ French poster) for Nakache & Toledano's The Extraordinary, on YouTube:

Based on a true story. For twenty years, Bruno and Malik have lived in a different world—the world of autistic children and teens. In charge of two separate nonprofit organizations (The Hatch & The Shelter), they train young people from underprivileged areas to be caregivers for extreme cases that have been refused by all other institutions. It’s an exceptional partnership, outside of traditional settings, for some quite extraordinary characters. The Specials, also known as Hors Normes in French or The Extraordinary, is both written and directed by French filmmakers Olivier Nakache & Éric Toledano, both directors of the films Let's Be Friends, Those Happy Days, The Intouchables, Samba, and C'est la vie! previously. This first premiered at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, also playing at the Zurich, Hamburg, and San Sebastian Film Festivals. There's still no US release date setup yet- stay tuned for updates. Who's intrigued?

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Chewing on Giallo and Other ‘Bites of Terror’ with Cuddles and Rage

Kids need a little nightmare to balance out their dreams. They can take it. We spend so much energy coddling to their welfare, worrying about their futures, that we bar them from the harsh reality of mortality. You’ve only got one life. Use it, and use it well.

My childhood was solidified with dark bouts of horror, ranging from holiday excursions with Gremlins to suburban sieges with The Monster Squad. Not only did they offer a taste of a feast that would eventually spread into Alien, The Shining, and Hellraiser, but they taught me the value of the life I had. Whether its the Creature from the Black Lagoon snagging me while I exit a Burger King or the heart attack time bomb hidden within the Whoppers themselves, Death is coming. Be prepared.

The husband and wife creative team of Liz and Jimmy Reed, better known as Cuddles and Rage, get it. They’ve built a mini-industry around mixing the adorable with the horrible, fashioning disturbingly cute stories that eek smiles from flesh riddled with goosebumps. We’re incredibly excited to offer the first glimpse of their new graphic novel horror anthology Bites of Terror: 10 Frightfully Delicious Tales to be published by Quirk Books in March of next year.

You are invited, by the spongey and delicious Cake Creeper, to partake in a lavish banquet of food-related fables with origins sopped from the plates of David Lynch, Dario Argento, and William Gaines. The 10 tales are painstakingly crafted via sculpture and photograph and explore topics as wide-ranging as the marital plight between an ice cream scoop and their cone when a devilish cupcake crosses their path to a widowed watermelon’s regret after regrowing her spoiled husband from his leftover seed. The stories are sharp, wicked, and hilarious.

Bites of Terror may not sound like a snack you’d give your kid, but like the best films from Pixar and Laika Studios, Cuddles and Rage excel in evenly distributing flavors to please seemingly conflicting palates. Little junior may miss the nods to William Friedkin in “Deviled Egg,” but they’ll be dying over the fork puns, and so will you.

“We have a good gut instinct,” says Liz. “We want there to be a reason behind everything that happens.” The jelly donut doesn’t have his insides expelled simply for the snark. There’s a saga being told. A gag being twisted into purpose.

“Everything should be fair game for a kid because that allows the opportunity for somebody to come in and explain why this happened,” she adds. Every tale is a conversation to be had and a lesson to consume. “We don’t need to sugar down this stuff or water it down. When I was a kid reading horror — R.L. Stein, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Goosebumps — it gave me a moment to self-reflect. What would I do in that situation? I think that a lot of these characters are in horrible situations. So for kids to put themselves in that position, or an adult even, anybody of any age, it really makes you think about the characters differently.” The wants and terrors of cookies and bagels are your wants and terrors.

Liz and Jimmy are ravenous cinema hounds. They eat everything up, especially when enraptured with a project. “We had a lot of fun talking about Brian DePalma when we were working on this,” says Jimmy. “We definitely did some faux split-diopter shots throughout the book.”

Constantly on the hunt for online and store sales, whenever the opportunity strikes, Liz and Jimmy stuff shopping carts with Vinegar Syndrome, Arrow, and Criterion Blu-rays. Among the wide range of auteurs who fall under those labels are the creators that spark their grandest imagination.

“We love Giallo!” exclaims Liz. “We love how it is bright, beautiful horror, and not enough people know about that genre or completely understand it.” Bites of Terror explodes with passionate vibrancy, highlighting scenes of culinary violence with a searing halo of color. “That’s Giallo. It was the perfect inspiration for us to play with our color palettes in the horror genre. So you’ll see a lot of dark, dark scenes with bright pink lights or bright, beautiful purples. All that came from the influences of those films.”

But blood saturated landscapes were not the only realms to hold sway over their artistry. “We want the pops of color that Technicolor film provides,” says Jimmy. “We’ll watch All That Heaven Allows and then Suspiria because of how their color influences the story mood and changes your feelings of the whole experience.”

At one point in their process, Cuddles and Rage considered actually shooting their graphic novel in Technicolor. “Then with a little research into the work behind Technicolor,” says Liz, “you understand why it went away. You’re like, ‘This is so hard.'” Still, the dream remains.

“You don’t want to create something where it’s this predictable pattern,” says Liz. “That would get boring fast.” To aid in that, they dug into every horror anthology at their disposable: The Vault of Horror, Tales from the Hood, Black Sabbath, Tales from the Crypt, etc. For Bites of Terror, they knew they needed a powerful wraparound story to tie everything together, and with that wraparound, they demanded the tastiest of ghoulish hosts: The Cake Creeper.

“We wanted to make sure that he had his own story,” says Jimmy. “As we were drafting these ideas, we were trying to keep that in mind. That’s where our device of having these artifacts end up in the hands of a collector came from. We then had to make sure that was kept solid as we worked through the other stories. We didn’t want anything straying too far from being able to tie it all together.”

Every little piece of the Cake Creeper’s design speaks to his backstory. “I really wanted him to look like a groom’s cake,” explains Liz. “Which took us down this background wedding story, and we were like ‘Let’s not go there.’ That eventually led to him owning an inn.” With that in place, they got to work making him as gross as they could. “We had a lot of mold on him in one design,” she adds, “but then you think about the logistics of managing every element that you put onto him.”

As the star of the show, the Cake Creeper was going to be placed in front of the camera multiple times. Gotta keep him fairly simple. “It was really important for us that he had a little bit of chocolate in there,” says Liz. “A little bit of a yellow cake. Not quite white icing, but gross sickly grayed-out icing. The idea of him only having one eye, being half-eaten, was locked in pretty early on. It didn’t feel like it would work right to have this creepy, perfectly designed cake telling you these horrific stories.”

Bites of Terror is a genre blend carefully considered, and seemingly designed for the movie weirdos that skulk the darkest corners of eBay on the hunt for out-of-print DVDs and even the more sordid VHS. It deals in the grim of humanity but never loses itself to its misery. “The way that we describe it is quirky stories with heart,” says Liz. “So, you might be chopping somebody up in a blender, but you’re doing it with love. You’re doing it for a reason. That’s really important to us because that’s what makes it fun.” If that doesn’t scream Brian DePalma, then nothing does. “We need to do a Cuddles and Rage take on Body Double, just saying.”

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Bites of Terror will be published by Quirk Books on March 24, 2020.

The post Chewing on Giallo and Other ‘Bites of Terror’ with Cuddles and Rage appeared first on Film School Rejects.

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