Auteur Update

The Skin I Live In (La piel que habito) is said to be Pedro Almodovár's "horror" film. As is typical of his career though, that genre can barely define or contain his style and sense of humor. The style of the trailer is another topic altogether. The soundtrack pops and veers over absurd imagery involving tiger suits and basement hose downs. While it seems to give away some bigger plot points, its manic meld more or less conjures questions like, "What the hell was that all about?" As should be expected, the mood is dazzling, the colors pop, and Pedro's storyline seems to soar and startle in equal measure.



Antonio Banderas returns for his sixth collaboration with Almodovár, a place where he's found his most fruitful roles to date (apologies to the Puss in Boots fans). I didn't create and dutifully enforce "The Law of Desire for Antonio Banderas" without damn fine reason...


It should be interesting to see if he once again falls into the mold of playing completely lovable psychotics, such as the sensual stalkers of Law of Desire and Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, or his gentle attempted rapist from Matador. Being a man is more than enough to make him seem dastardly in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. (And Labyrinth of Passion remains my one unseen Pedro picture, considering it's caught in the labyrinth of unreleased titles in the US.) Playing with guns, making skin suits and abducting pretty ladies is enough to verify Banderas' psychotic side, and he does look lovely as ever.

Paredes, Banderas, Almodovár and Anaya at Cannes

His lovely leading ladies are played by Elena Anaya (Talk to Her) and fellow Almodovár veteran Marisa Paredes (All About My Mother, The Flower of My Secret, High Heels), while cinematographer José Luis Alcaine has captured some of Pedro's most seductive and sensational images with Volver, Bad Education, and Antonio Banderas naked in Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! It promises to be a horror film with heart... clad in a skintight tiger suit.



David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method looks to pair the the heated psychosexual dueling (and dualing) of Dead Ringers with a historical period piece. However, if this trailer were a Rorschach blot all anyone would see is Oscar-bait. That generic music swell completely stifles the madness and masochism we know is more to Cronenberg's style. It's a safe method I suppose to avoid the more sordid subplots with eyes on the acting prize, but this trailer couldn't be more confining if it were a corset.



You don't need a monocle to see that Michael Fassbender makes for a dashing lead as Carl Jung, tightly tailored and touting an oddly entrancing moustache. Together with Cronenberg favorite, a dapper Viggo Mortensen (as Sigmund Freud), well... One can only hope they experience a Freudian slip.


Oh, and Keira something or other is all messed up in the head... It seems to have all the period opulence with even more opulent actors, and enough headplay to burst your head Scanners-style. But that's just my professional opinion.

Psychology Quiz:

Jung or Freud?

Mass for Cinephile Shut-Ins: Part Four

Let us commune over all this vague pre-publicity so as to garner faith and hope for a bright cinematic future. And let us also pass invalid judgment.

This is Part Four.

Human scientific experiments at their most prim and proper.

Never Let Me Go

directed by: Mark Romanek

written by: Alex Garland, Kazuo Ishiguro (novel)

starring: Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan, Sally Hawkins, Charlotte Rampling

Basically: Friends reunite to unravel a shared dark past at their private boarding school.

And We Should Care Because: The summary suggests English period drama of an ordinary kind, when the plot is actually steeped in scholarly sci-fi. Based on a novel by The Remains of the Day author Kazuo Ishiguro, threads of the story involve tea, scones, cloning and dystopias. Wisely the school seems to have cloned a choice British cast in the likes of Knightley, Hawkins, Rampling, and fresh-faced breakthrough Carey Mulligan. Director Mark Romanek's career consists largely of music videos, outside of his 2002 freak show set during Robin Williams dark period. Not the scarring era of Patch Adams, RV, License to Wed and Old Dogs, but the characteristically dark period that included Death to Smoochy, Insomnia, and Romanek's own One Hour Photo. The meld of an ace female cast, sinister schoolgirl undercurrents, and a notable visual stylist, could make for a posh, pleasant surprise.

Status: Curious

Walking and Talking,

and waiting for old people to die off.

Please Give

directed and written by: Nicole Holofcener

starring: Catherine Keener, Amanda Peet, Rebecca Hall, Oliver Platt, Kevin Corrigan

Basically: A couple stirs confrontation as they eye the antiques of an elderly woman in their New York apartment building.

And We Should Care Because: Nicole Holofcener's films are so adept at delving into specific characteristic quirks, without those detrimental indie quirks. Lovely & Amazing is perhaps her most acclaimed title, and an apt description of Holofcener's charming, but still scathing, works. Alongside longtime muse and perfect sardonic vessel, Catherine Keener, Holofcener will once again seek to dissect human flaws, flawlessly. Advanced word from Sundance has given fans reason to demand, "Please, Give," with critics citing the writer/director's consistent talent for making small moments ring of immensely poignant truths.

Status: Can't Miss

The Origin of Grief-Stricken Love

Rabbit Hole

directed by: John Cameron Mitchell

written by: David Lindsay-Abaire

starring: Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhart, Dianne Wiest

Basically: A couple unravels upon the death of their four-year-old son.

And We Should Care Because: John Cameron Mitchell is a reputable auteur after two dynamic and distinctive works: the trans rock spectacular Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and the neurotic sex spectacular Shortbus. Based on the Pulitzer Prize winning stage play by David Lindsay-Abaire, the tonal shift seems inevitably darker than Cameron Mitchell's past works, but he has already shown himself to be gifted at balancing even his bawdiest moments with some touching backstory. For what reads like a conventional drama, the cast and crew promises anything but. Nicole Kidman graciously ties herself to another edgy indie director - the type of career choice that consistently gives her the best material. And we know by now that a grieving Kidman is a great Kidman. Aaron Eckhart and Dianne Wiest lend their own spark to what easily sounds like one of the highlight dramas of the year. I'm so ready to love taking the plunge down this rabbit hole of despair.

Status: Can't Miss

Being a celebrity is about sex, drugs,

and paying child support.

Somewhere

directed and written by: Sofia Coppola

starring: Stephen Dorff, Elle Fanning, Benicio Del Toro, Chris Pontius

Basically: Troubled actor Johnny Marco receives a wake up call from his 11-year-old daughter while holed up at LA's infamous Chateau Marmont.

And We Should Care Because: One of the most fascinating directors working today - female or otherwise - Sofia Coppola finds such startling grace in her relaxed, atmospheric tone poems on film. Her last, the unjustly ignored and utterly sublime Marie Antoinette, had Coppola taking on a project of historically grand scale with a personal, ethereal touch. Somewhere reads like it could very well find itself in a similarly detached headspace as the many lethargic and longing characters Coppola has confronted throughout her career. She's keeping it interesting with oft-ignored actor Stephen Dorff playing bad-boy Johnny Marco, and a compellingly cast Chris Pontius of MTV's Jackass as one of Johnny's pals. Stellar French band Phoenix (the lead of whom is married to Coppola) is also lending their talents to the soundtrack.

Status: Can't Miss

Bite your tongue.
Then bite mine.

The Talking Cure

directed by: David Cronenberg

written by: Christopher Hampton (play)

starring: Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley

Basically: Carl Jung finds therapeutic and romantic success while using Sigmund Freud's "talking cure" approach on a disturbed female patient. Freud names Jung his successor only to find discord and a division of thought.

And We Should Care Because: All that male goodness under the guidance of mastermind David Cronenberg? My mind is officially blown Scanners-style. The collaborations between Mortensen and Cronenberg have already yielded two jaw dropping performances in two knockout films. The inclusion of Club Silencio favorite, the equally jaw dropping Michael Fassbender, could only be topped if Cronenberg were to make a sequel to the bathhouse scene in Eastern Promises. What can I say, I'm Rabid with a case of sexually parasitic Shivers. The mental minefield premise seems right up Cronenberg's alley. He's never one to disappoint when it comes the psychological, sexual, and everything dark and delicious in the Interzone.

Status: Can't Miss

Part Five soon.

Oscar's Blind Side

My two picks for the biggest Blind Side omissions from this year's Oscar ceremony. Sandra Bullock's passing them by, but if she goes below 50 mph, she'll explode!

Best Actor:

Michael Fassbender

(Hunger / Fish Tank)

Responsible for one of the most tantalizing monologues of the year in Hunger, Michael Fassbender is also responsible for the most tantalizing man flesh of the year in Fish Tank. Both equally admirable and award worthy. One film details the horrors inflicted on the body, the other the body's insurmountable pleasures.

Beyond his obvious external beauty though is a masterfully confident performer. Hunger strips Fassbender bare, his body and mind made frail for a cause. The brutal physicality of the role is met with a startling internal grace, turning the sustained single shots into captivating and moving reveals. While wasting away before our eyes, the depths of his character are fully nourished.

Fish Tank then is just as startling, merging that inherent sex object quality with a father figure conflict. His encounters with the young Mia are equal parts erotic and unsettling as we experience her desires for her mom's new boytoy first hand, and yet we feel the detached darkness subtly creep in with each curious glance and questionable touch. Removing someone's shoes has never seemed so layered and lustful. His character's turns could make him horribly villainous, yet Fassbender stirs an inner judgement and disgrace that keeps him from being painted as simplistically. If Michael Fassbender is a sculptural man, he manages to chip away at all the right parts.

Best Actress:

Tilda Swinton

(Julia)

Channeling Gena Rowlands if mob maven Gloria had taken to child abduction rather than childcare. Her olive-dropped swirl of moral suspect is filled to the brim in Tilda Swinton's boozy, mesmerizing creation. Julia is a woman bent on destroying herself and everyone around her, destined for a life lived in brown paper bags and back seats, until a child enters her life. Same story we've seen a million times, and yet Julia first abducts the child and binds him to the motel radiator outside of Mexico. For every noble effort there's some nefarious counterpoint and Swinton builds Julia's inevitable soul without orchestration - even if Swinton's detailing plays like some kind of tipsy symphony.

I've Always Depended on the Kindness of Strangers

Survival horror can be a tricky but terrific genre. Able to tap into powerful human instincts and nature's savagery with taut, simplistic thrills, they're often just as likely to provide blank-slate characters for audience projection and one choreographed set-piece after another. Eden Lake (2008) does indeed do much of the same, but with enough awareness and angle to toughen the blow: its heavenly setting will inevitably become a bleak battleground. Kids are burnt and bludgeoned, yuppies are forced to hide in feces; such is this hard-hearted tale of human nature that's rotting and left for dead. A once majestic natural quarry is now the site of a dumpster filled with shit.


A pretty preschool teacher (Kelly Reilly) plays peekaboo with her toddlers, only to be given the greatest sense of irony later as she hides from a group of traumatizing teenagers armed with box-cutters and videophones. James Watkins debut is an interesting comment on the "killer kids" genre that we've seen more readily in recent years, most notably a film like Ils (Them) or even Larry Clark's Bully. While these unfeeling adolescents (or "hoodies" if we're being properly British) are knowingly given few characteristic quirks, the film still makes a point to comment on a society no longer dependant on the kindness of strangers.

Don't be a stranger, Michael Fassbender.

Our attractive young couple (Michael Fassbender in swim trunks!) at the center of the chaos has their parking spot stolen, suffer kids playing loud music, bikers cutting them off in an intersection, boorish bartenders, and townsfolk refusing directions. Every attempt by the couple to remain civil in their surroundings is subverted into a sadistic trap as the strangers reveal their self-centered and extreme soullessness. The adolescents of Eden Lake start out as simply rude ruffians but become utterly ruthless. It's clearly something that has been passed down to them more readily than used cars and clothing in this socially malevolent, ironically named British haven. It's a film about the sins of asshole fathers revisited on their asshole sons, revisited on their asshole fathers.

Why couldn't they just be doing drugs?

The film does look fondly on human nature's will to survive amidst such an often ugly and unfeeling world, even briefly celebrating our young lovers impending engagement... Of course that's after he has already been impaled by a tree and sliced to ribbons, and she's been forced to watch. Nasty and nihilistic it is, but all the same thoughtful and tense in its manipulations. These characters exist in the same distrustful world chaos as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Last House on the Left or Wolf Creek, where momentary glimmers of hope quickly become detours into the hellish hands of disturbed people driven by absolutely nothing. Eden Lake stays true to its most base survival instincts, but it ultimately survives this because of a sharp and savage mood of social decay. It gives the audience a beating to be sure, but then in this day and age, that's just child's play.