The Devil Rides Out (1968)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ 

The Devil Rides Out (1968) – T. Fisher

Hammer Films hired Richard Matheson (adept in the horror/supernatural genre) to adapt Dennis Wheatley’s novel about Satan worshippers for the screen. The result takes for granted that evil powers exist and that men (such as Aleister Crowley) could tap into them and use them for their own purposes after much study of the ancient arts.  In this film, that man is Mocata (Charles Gray) but he also appears (called Karswell) in my favourite film of this genre, Curse of the Demon (1957), played by Niall MacGinnis.  The editing in The Devil Rides Out is tight and often cuts out the exposition – we jump right in to find that the Duc de Richleau (Christopher Lee) and his friend Rex Van Ryn (Leon Greene) are worried about a friend who has been keeping too much to himself.  They drop by his house to discover that he has recently joined a Satanic circle and then the plot launches from there, as Richleau and Van Ryn tangle with evil in an attempt to rescue their friend Simon and another girl Tanith before they are baptised on the evil Sabbath.  The film blends references to arcane rituals with spooky (though fake-looking) special effects with rip-roaring adventure story action.  Christopher Lee is his usual commanding presence – and fortunately he is on the side of good, rather than evil; otherwise, the Goat of Mendes might have won.  As usual, the Hammer production values are top notch (those amazing cars and mansions) and this is one of their best releases. 

A Touch of Sin (2013)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

A Touch of Sin (2013) – Z. Jia

Not quite what I expected from director Zhangke Jia but perhaps even better because of that.  I’d already seen Platform (2000) and The World (2004), which I recall as being character-driven realist dramas set in a China engaging with capitalism and all its problems.  That theme continues here but Jia has drawn four violent “true crime” stories from the news and dramatized them with a startling “in your face” quality that seemed absent in the previous quieter features.  The stories are interlinked by virtue of overlapping locations (and briefly glimpsed characters) but they don’t really come together to create a gestalt.  What they do share is the sense that China is now under the sway of a very powerful rich elite who exploit and subjugate those with lower status (particularly women, perhaps).  It seems surprising that Jia was able to express these problems openly from Mainland China or perhaps criticism of the effects of capitalism is still in line with government views despite the cultural changes.  Briefly, the events on display involve a man angry with his local village elder for selling out their community and taking bribes, a young man who freely uses a handgun for senseless violence (and to steal designer bags), a sauna receptionist who fends off businessmen demanding sex (with a martial arts wuxia styled attack), and another young man who is subjected to a number of low paying and degrading jobs (including in a brothel for rich elites) resulting in his total alienation.  Physical violence is present in all the tales, often shockingly and graphically so, but documenting the moral and spiritual violence that is done to the main protagonists may be Jia’s real aim.  He also has a great eye for Chinese locales, frequently showing his characters as tiny figures dwarfed in the face of giant factories or desolate rural landscapes, powerless as they also are in society.

    

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Blade Runner 2049 (2017) – D. Villeneuve

Capturing the feel and appeal of the original 1982 film (or perhaps the later “Final Cut”), this is one sequel that does not disappoint.  Ryan Gosling is suitably cool and affectless as the heir to Harrison Ford’s Deckard (evoking detectives of bygone eras, but notably Delon's hitman in Melville’s Le Samourai, 1967). He is a new version of the replicant, now built by Jared Leto’s Wallace Corporation, a model designed not to lie or to resist orders (supposedly).  His territory is the same desolate Los Angeles that we saw in the earlier film, perhaps a bit more burnt out, but with the same enormous animated neon signs and the logos for alternate reality corporations (such as Atari or the CCCP).  At home, he has his own A. I. girlfriend (Ana de Armas) who has no corporeal form but seems to have an independent consciousness.  As before, the film foregrounds the struggle with identity (are they real or not real?) felt by both Gosling’s “K” (later Joe, but not Josef) and de Armas’ Joi.  K recalls memories but feels that they are only implants -- until a politically charged case starts him questioning.  The plot slowly starts to come together with a few surprising moments of revelation that I won’t spoil but director Denis Villeneuve (and cinematographer Roger Deakins) takes more pleasure in evoking the ethos of Blade Runner slowly and carefully rather than putting flesh on the bare bones plot (co-written by original screenwriter Hampton Fancher, extending Philip K. Dick’s source).  Still, the themes are there for contemplating, if you like.  Seeing this in the theatre, with its massively boosted electronic score and noticeable surround sound effects, likely produced a more visceral impact on me than the home viewer would receive.  The occasional fight sequences, particularly with the chief replicant villain played by Sylvia Hoeks, also break the otherwise moody atmosphere.  In the end, what we have here is a carefully constructed evocation of the earlier film that manages not to screw it up and which uses the latest in filmmaking techniques to add value to the presentation; highly enjoyable, but let’s hope the franchise ends here.

Japón (2002)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Japón (2002) – C. Reygadas

Full of confronting images that seem to declare “this is real life, don’t look away” but also gentle meditative and scenic – it is hard to know what to make of Carlos Reygadas’ debut feature (now 15 years old).  A man travels to a remote canyon telling those that take him there that he aims to kill himself (evoking a Mexican version of Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry). He rents space in a barn from an old woman who lives high up above the town.  Reygados uses widescreen 16mm which gives a strange faded texture to the image which the light often bleaches out; the images are beautifully composed or startlingly odd (in form and content).  One can’t help thinking about the choices that the director is making. Although slow, the film casts a hypnotic spell as the story unfolds and grand themes (eros, thanatos) jostle with the rough and simple life of the Mexican peasants (nonprofessionals, all), occasionally to the strains of opera heard on the protagonist’s headphones (there are many point-of-view or subjective shots).  We wait to see what the man will do, wondering what has driven him to this faraway location, but he slowly begins to feel concern for his landlady, Ascen (for Ascension), and the issues she faces in her community.  Perhaps his subsequent “intervention” into her life amounts to despoiling or tainting, resulting in the final tracking shot (which I only gradually understood). However, other interpretations may be possible; this is definitely a film where viewers are left to draw their own conclusions. Personally, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the natural world portrayed here is a harsh one and that we humans must do what we can to cope with it.

  

A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) – E. Kazan

Undoubtedly, the intensity and themes of the play by Tennessee Williams are responsible for the power of this film -- but there is also no doubting the fact that the acting craft on display heightens that power yet further.  Vivien Leigh plays Blanche DuBois as pathetic yet somehow noble, deluded and debauched but worthy of our pity and sympathy.  As the only central member of the cast not to step straight from the Broadway production into the film, she was thrust into the web of Method actors, led by 25-year-old Marlon Brando (and also featuring Karl Malden and Kim Hunter).  Brando pulls out all the stops in showing Stanley Kowalski to be a thug, pitting his raw unbridled style against Leigh’s more composed acting (and this contrast meshes perfectly with the dynamics of the drama).  Of course, the play was sanitized when it was refashioned for the screen but it isn’t too hard to read between the lines.  Blanche DuBois arrives in New Orleans to stay with her sister, Stella, and brother-in-law Stanley in a small seedy apartment in the French Quarter. Tensions erupt between Blanche and Stanley.  She begins a romance with his friend Mitch (Karl Malden) which is dashed when Stanley investigates Blanche’s past and reveals all to Mitch.  Then, when Stella is in the hospital having a baby, Stanley does the unthinkable to Blanche which causes her to lose her grip on reality (which was already tenuous).  Director Elia Kazan (who infamously named names to HUAC the next year) translated his Broadway success to the screen by breaking it out of the small apartment and including other locations (sparingly); one innovation was to keep shrinking the set so that Blanche’s growing claustrophobia becomes real to the audience.  To his credit, Kazan doesn’t get in the way of the play or the acting but instead manages to create the perfect environment for both to flourish. The result is gripping but deeply unsettling.