The Round-Up: July 23-29

THE LAST OF ENGLAND

Tilda Swinton brings an element of mourning to THE LAST OF ENGLAND.

Derek Jarman’s THE LAST OF ENGLAND (1987, Criterion Channel through month’s end, Apple TV+, Kanopy) is a blisteringly angry, sometimes impenetrable work that ranks among the director’s most personal films. There’s no real story, though there are characters and images that recur throughout. It’s more an assemblage of visuals and sounds, a montage of effects in the spirit of Eisenstein. Made at the height of Thatcherism and shortly after Jarman was diagnosed HIV-positive, the film takes on the failure of Great Britain’s promise, juxtaposing home movies from the director’s childhood with images of abjection set in decaying areas of London and Belfast. There are moments of queer jouissance — a leather-clad young man playing the pan flute, a man in a tutu performing ballet around an open fire, a wedding with drag queens as bridesmaids. But they play against scenes of devastation as soldiers in balaclavas round up prisoners and execute a man we will later realize is the bridegroom, while refugees sit on a wharf as Marianne Faithful sings “The Sky Boat Song.” The social commentary gets more direct when a very proper mourner at a properly British funeral asks a soldier if he enjoyed the Falklands War and is looking forward to the next one. In one of the most intense moments, Jarman’s muse, Tilda Swinton, who had played the bride, rends her wedding gown as Diamanda Galas plays on the soundtrack. It’s a moment of unalloyed grief, the remnant of the anger that had informed the first parts of the film, and it anticipates her frenzied mourning dance to the “Sanctus” in Jarman’s later WAR REQUIEM (1989). Though the moment in the later film is more devastating because Jarman found in Britten’s piece a means of shaping his responses not just to war but to the state of the world he would soon leave, the work in THE LAST OF ENGLAND still demands respect as a very personal cry of anguish from one of the screen’s great lost artists.

ETHERIA FILM NIGHT 2023

Sleep paralysis turns into a waking terror in Natalie Metzger's "Sleep Study."

For the past ten years, the Etheria Film Night has screened short horror films by emerging woman directors, and for the past four years, the top choices have been packaged on Shudder. ETHERIA FILM NIGHT 2023 (2023, Shudder, some shorts are on YouTube) features some highly imaginative pieces, bookended by two very good films representing different approaches to abusive relationships. In Meg Swertlow’s wickedly funny “No Overnight Parking,” abused wife Alyssa Milano is stalked by a masked killer in a deserted parking garage. A really good short film says just enough to feel complete, and this one hits that note properly. You can envision what’s going to follow the action; you don’t need to see it (though any chance to see Milano’s work is a joy). Chelsea Gonzalez’s “Make the Call” is a little longer and more layered. Writer Sal Neslusan, who also stars, has created a high-context conversation between former best friends in a world afflicted with a virus that makes the infected uncontrollably violent. She and Gonzelez create their reality in just 15 minutes through the judicious placement of details and with good performances by Neslusan and Camille Chen. Other highlights include Genevieve Kertesz’s lushly shot folk tale, “The Erl King”; Zoey Martinson’s metaphor for racial injustice, “Incomplete”; Natalie Metzger’s creepy vision of sleep paralysis and the stress of motherhood, “Sleep Study,” and Mai Nakashima’s short, very unsettling look at a TV movie that develops a deadly mind of its own, “Border.” None of the pieces are total monkey dump, and at least the weaker entries are over quickly.

THE MAN WITH A CLOAK

 

Louis Calhern, Leslie Caron and Barbara Stanwyck do their best

to elevate the weak script of THE MAN WITH A CLOAK.

Edgar Allan Poe is credited with creating the American detective story, so putting him in a mystery-thriller would seem a natural idea. Right? Not judging by Fletcher Markle’s THE MAN WITH A CLOAK (1951, TCM). Joseph Cotten stars as a hard-drinking poet who calls himself Dupin and gets involved in the fight over dying expatriate Frenchman Louis Calhern’s will. Did he leave everything to his shady lady housekeeper, Barbara Stanwyck, or to the grandson who sent his fiancée (Leslie Caron) to beg for his support of the Second French Republic? The mystery is hardly as complicated as those in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” or “The Purloined Letter,” and yet it still seems a leap when Cotten figures it out. But then, the whole film makes little sense. Why does Calhern plan to kill himself when he’s dying anyway? Why does Stanwyck flirt with Cotten? Does she think he can help her secure the inheritance? Is she attracted to him? Is she jealous of his friendship with Caron? Why has nobody in 1848 heard of Poe when he was already famous for his poetry and short stories? How can Cotton drink constantly and never get drunk? Why does the film treat the revelation of Cotton’s identity as a shock when anybody with a high-school education at the time would have known who he was within 20 minutes? Why did the studio and good actors look at this script and say, “This seems like a great idea?” Calhern, in a role offered to Lionel Barrymore, and Margaret Wycherly, as the cackling cook, come off best. They just disregard all the idiocy and have a high time nibbling on the scenery. Stanwyck and Jim Backus, as a friendly tavern keeper, manage to make the faux poetic dialog almost sound good, and she has a charming moment flirting with Cotton as she lip synchs a song. The music, by David Raksin, is both wonderful and far ahead of its time. If I were you, I’d skip the movie and pick up the soundtrack.

PAST LIVES

 

Teo Yoo is the odd man out, dramaturgically speaking, in Grace Lee and John Magaro's

relationship in the sometimes beautiful, sometimes maddening PAST LIVES.

There’s some lovely work in Celine Song’s PAST LIVES (2023, in theaters, on demand). There are also some pace issues and an unfortunate tendency to treat one character as “the other” that undermine some if not all of the good work. Nora’s family emigrates from South Korea to Canada when she’s 12, separating her from her best friend, Jung Hae. Twelve years later she’s in New York working on her writing career, and they reconnect online, forging an adult friendship that ultimately can’t survive their distance and the different paths along which their lives are headed. Another 12 years later, she’s a married, rising playwright, and Jung Hae comes to New York for a visit. As the adult Nora, Greta Lee does some exquisite work, with beautiful moments of repose She’s very much the center of the film, something established at the beginning when she looks at the camera before the story unfolds in flashbacks. Teo Yoo, who plays the adult Jung Hae, is clearly a capable actor, but his character doesn’t have the focus hers has. He makes eye contact with a woman in a restaurant in China and, on his visit to New York, tells Lee he recently broke up with his girlfriend. Was that the girl in the restaurant? We never really see them together and only know of the breakup and its reasons because he tells Lee about it.  With his story told in snippets, more of the focus goes to Lee’s husband (John Magaro), and the best scene in the film is their conversation after her reunion with Yoo. It’s a wonder of subtextual anxiety as Magaro tries to find out what Yoo means to her now and if that threatens their marriage. I just wish Yoo’s character were given the same consideration. Lee’s meetings with Yoo are awkward at first. There are long pauses to communicate that, but they start to feel too long, almost self-conscious on Song’s part. And it’s frustrating because they eat up time that could have been spent further developing Yoo’s character. I understand the primary focus is what his visit means to Lee, but I simply think it would be more effective were he presented as a fully rounded character.

 

FEAR NO EVIL

FEAR NO EVIL, unless you're a homophobic bully trying to embarrass

a satanic teen in the school shower.

Frank LaLoggia’s debut feature, FEAR NO EVIL (1981, Shudder) is one hot mess. It’s not as cohesive, technically accomplished or well-acted overall as his second film, LADY IN WHITE (1988). Yet there are parts of it that are thrillingly original and one performance that can stand next to the best of any in his or just about anybody’s else’s work. Like many high-schoolers, Stefan Arngrim, the kid from LAND OF THE GIANTS, seems to be the earthly reincarnation of Lucifer. Only this time he is. He’s pursued by the archangel Michael, now an aging woman (Elizabeth Hoffman, making an auspicious film debut at 54, and if anybody knows what she was doing before that, please let me know) searching for her fellow angel, who turns out to be another high-schooler (Kathleen Rowe McAllen). A lot of the school scenes seem derivative, but there’s one in the men’s showers in which the school bully (Daniel Eden) tries to bash Arngrim only to find himself stuck in a lip lock that won’t let go. This and a later scene with Eden have led some critics to label the film homophobic, but I think they’re more about bullying as a sign of misogyny and repressed homosexuality. There’s a local passion play in which Jesus really does die on the cross (how medieval), thanks to Arngrim’s magic. There’s also a beautifully staged funeral scene. But then, there are zombies whose decaying flesh has turned into corn flakes (they were forced on LaLoggia and ended up being what sold the film to a distributor). The film has some great locations, particularly Boldt Castle in Alexandria, NY. But shooting regionally on a low budget meant LaLoggia had to use some pretty poor actors (somebody needed to the remind gym teacher he was playing a human being). But then there’s Hoffman, who already has the command of the camera and characterization she would display in her later work. She makes even the worst dialog compelling and almost poetic and manages to connect with even the weakest actors. Fred Goodich did the excellent, very atmospheric camera work, while LaLoggia and David Spear composed an effective score. There’s also some great contemporary music on the soundtrack from artists like Patti Smith, The Ramones, Talking Heads, The Boomtown Rats, The B-52s and The Sex Pistols.

FRIDAY THE 13TH

Revenge is sweet until it backfires on FRIDAY THE 13TH.

I thought I had reviewed all of the Friday the 13^th movies, but after showing Sean S. Cunningham’s original FRIDAY THE 13^TH (1980, On Demand) to a friend who’d never seen it, I discovered I hadn’t done the first or the second. This was the latest of many viewings of one of the original slashers, and this time, watching with someone else, I noticed some things:

1.     The film obviously borrows heavily from John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN (1978), most notably with an opening murder set in the past, though Cunningham’s film provides no shocking revelation of the killer (that was saved for later) and provides the keys to a more concrete motive.

2.     The big mistake in that opening sequence is partly shared with some scenes in HALLOWEEN. It starts with what seems to be a subjective camera shot that isn’t. Later, when it finally becomes a subjective shot with the killing of the two camp counsellors, Cunningham makes a mistake of his own. He breaks the tension by switching to an objective shot as the first counselor is killed.

3.     Until my friend pointed it out, I hadn’t realized how androgynous the final girl (Adrienne King) is. Her short hair may have been intended to contrast with the female victims, and of course, it was the popular Dorothy Hamill cut of the period, but it also creates an intriguing sexual ambiguity that helps support Carol J. Clover’s contention in MEN, WOMEN AND CHAINSAWS: GENDER IN THE MODERN HORROR FILM that the final girl derives her power from her virginal, almost asexual status, even though King has clearly been having an affair with her boss.

4.     The final battle is a rarity for the period in depicting two women going at it hammer and tongs without a man as the source of contention. Yes, I know Jason’s death motivates the film, but they’re not exactly fighting over him.

5.     I still maintain the best ending for the film would be for the final girl’s mother to come into her hospital room and be played by Betsy Palmer. Yes, it would mean there wouldn’t be any sequels (“Big loss,” I hear some of you saying sarcastically), but it would provide a much more interesting note of ambiguity. Or have I been watching too many gialli?