When I first saw the trailer for The Banshees of Inisherin, I knew this was the film for me.
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Anyone who has ever dedicated a substantial amount of their free time to watching movies will have a similar story of at least one film that seems to exist for them alone. If that aforementioned anyone is me, such a list includes 2013’s paranoia-drenched tension nightmare, Magic Magic.
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Yes yes, I know, it’s November now, but only just barely, and I have three Hammer Dracula films left to do, so I’m squeaking them in under the wire of the end of spooky season!
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The last film in this series celebrating very good, contemporary films that maybe fall ever so short of an absolutely legendary cinematic triumph is a Spanish/Ethiopian co-production which is a combination that is precisely as uncommon as this movie is delightfully nuts.
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The sixth Hammer Dracula film, and I’m an old pro by now, thinking, “Dracula will be resurrected about 40 minutes in, I wonder how they’ll manage it this time? And will Chris have fewer than twenty lines or fewer than ten?”
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Part Four of probably at least one more in this series of recent films that are actually very good despite not being absolutely one-hundred per cent perfect. (In other words, a normal movie.)
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There are changes and transitions throughout film industry that some of the directors that work in it smoothly adapt to, while others fall from grace. One of the biggest transitions in film history was the transition to sound, and one of the filmmakers who had the most difficulty was Charlie Chaplin.
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The fifth of the Hammer Dracula films starts with a coach staidly trotting along with three men inside. Two are very weird and grumpy, and one is Roy Kinnear, father of Rory, and very recognizable as being Mr. Salt from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory made the following year! Mr. Salt is cheerfully eating and chatting, and offers to sell the other two a snow globe that one of them wants so much. They attack him and throw him and his luggage out of the coach!
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Recapping the general idea behind this series: I often fail to properly recognize movies that commit the grievous crime of being either too contemporary or imperfect. To rectify that – and I fully acknowledge that this is a ME problem – I’m attempting to highlight a few recent films that I think earn merit because of their predominantly positive attributes and in spite of their minimal faults.
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An English family, two brothers and their respective wives, converse with the priest, who tells them NOT to go to Carlsbad on any account. And if they do go, stay away from the castle. What castle? There’s no castle on the map!
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Part Two of my attempt to ever so slightly relax myself from the hegemonic shackles of the Greatest of All Time film canon brings us to International Falls, a well-made, humanistic drama about the general dissatisfaction of life. In other words, it’s entirely relatable.
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One of the gifts of film director Jacques Tourneur was how he was able to take something that would seem minor and turn it into something profound. In his Val Lewton-produced horror films such as The Cat People, I Walked With a Zombie, and The Leopard Man he takes what might be laughable premises, but creates haunting and psychological films through mood and atmosphere. Then he would make one of the greatest film noirs ever with Out of the Past. What would be conceived by some at first as a cheap crime quickie, he creates great emotion, and again uses mood and atmosphere.
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