PERFECT DAYS - SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL *UPDATED*

 

A Hen In The Wind / Perfect Days

Last year I shared my thoughts on Wim Winders' Perfect Days and it's connection to the work of Ozu (click here to read). Not every cinematic comparison could make it in to the original post. After a while, a lot of Ozu's signature shots can get pretty similar/redundant and I didn't want to repeat myself. 

Below are the cinematic parallels that I saved from the cutting room floor...

Late Spring / Perfect Days

Tokyo Twilight / Perfect Days

Tokyo Twilight / Perfect Days

Tokyo Chorus / Perfect Days

Tokyo Chorus / Perfect Days

An Autumn Afternoon / Perfect Days

A Hen In The Wind / Perfect Days

Late Spring / Perfect Days

Dragnet Girl / Perfect Days

End Of Summer / Perfect Days

Tokyo Story / Perfect Days

The Flavor Of Green Tea Over Rice / Perfect Days

An Autumn Afternoon / Perfect Days

Tokyo Chorus / Perfect Days

TIMESTALKER

I don’t always mean to force a connection between two unrelated films but there’s no other way for me to praise Alice Lowe’s Timestalker without bringing up Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast. Both movies are darkly comedic time traveling love stories involving stalkers that subconsciously reference the work of David Lynch. 

David Lynch has always been a big inspiration, as well, and you can definitely see the inheritance of that in the film - Alice Lowe, Filmmaker Magazine

Eraserhead / Timestalker

There’s a lot more to both movies but those basic similarities combined with the fact that they were both released within a year of each other makes the comparison more than understandable. It’s like when Cronenberg’s Crash and Lynch’s Lost Highway both got released around the same time. Yeah they’re different but on a surface level, they’re both existential hyper-sexual films that sort of focus on automobile-based eroticism. Or, more recently, Fincher’s The Killer and Linklater’s Hitman. both movies are incredibly different but at the same time, it would be weird to not draw some comparison between two new hitman movies where the protagonists screw up big time and have to correct their errors.

I’ve been a fan/defender of Bonello’s work for more than 20 years but I found his time traveling stalker story to be a bit disappointing. I know I’m in the minority on this. Most folks love The Beast. I just thought it kind of lingered on and took forever to come to an end. I appreciate the audaciousness of it all and the subconscious nods to folks like Leos Carax, David Lynch and Maya Deren. But at the end of the day it just didn’t move me (click here to read my thoughts from 2023).

I hate bringing down one movie to prop up another but Timestalker is what everyone thinks The Beast is.

Lowe has compared her own film to Baby Reindeer. Like Timestalker, Baby Reindeer is another UK-based story about a stalker that takes place over a few different time periods. This pairing makes sense but it’s kind of driving me crazy how more folks aren’t making the connection between The Beast and Timestalker. It’s like when Cronenberg’s eXistenZ came out a few weeks after The Matrix. Again - both movies are different but also very similar. Even today, rarely do you see many parallels drawn between the two movies but they’re both “virtual reality” sci-fi stories where characters use their bodies as ports to log in to another dimension. And they both played in theaters at the same time! 

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t draw a comparison between Timestalker and one of the most famous time traveling movies of all time: Highlander. Lowe has said herself that outside of folks like Lynch, Powell and Pressburger, etc that she was inspired by a lot of pop culture movies from the 80s.

Timestalker is really influenced by eighties films, which had a fun way of dealing with massive ideas. This boy traveling back in time with his mum fancying him, which was a big mainstream hit! The eighties got away with dealing with complex matters in a light way. I miss that we don't really get to explore these fun and fresh ideas, because we don't get those sort of conceptual films anymore - Alice Lowe, themoviewaffler.com

Recently on twitter Lowe said the similarities to Highlander were not intentional but I couldn't resist making a side-by-side. There’s even a duel scene in both films!

Highlander / Timestalker

I've always been really influenced by Powell and Pressburger - Alice Lowe, Filmmaker Magazine

Black Narcissus / Timestalker

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp / Timestalker

A Matter of Life and Death / Timestalker

Tales Of Hoffmann / Timestalker

Normally I don’t like comparing anything to Stanley Kubrick in 2025 because what movie isn’t influenced by him on some level? But Lowe used some of the techniques in Eyes Wide Shut for Prevenge so it isn’t out of line to assume the same techniques were used for Timestalker.

I said to the DoP that I found the thematic use of artificial coloured lights throughout Eyes Wide Shut really creepy, and I wanted to try and get some of that - Alice Lowe, BFI 

Eyes Wide Shut / Timestalker

Timestalker is the story of a perpetually reincarnated woman (“Agnes”) who finds herself falling in love with the same man over and over no matter what time period she finds herself in. It’s easy to read this as a basic female-driven story about finding yourself caught up in a redundant dating loop or falling in love with the same type of men over and over again and having it go nowhere. And that would make sense. I just suspect there’s more. It’s been over 8 years between Pervenge and Timestalker. I can’t help but think this movie is Lowe working through the frustrations of trying getting a film made and be a consistent director. There’s a lot of runaround and disappointment when it comes to getting a film off the ground. Meetings, scraping together budgets & resources, asking favors, etc. At a certain point, low/mid budget filmmaking has to feel like an endless loop much like Agnes finds herself in Timestalker. 

It’s best to go in to Timestalker without any preconceived notions of Lowe’s debut. Prevenge is a personal psychological horror about motherhood. Timestalker can’t really be categorized as easily. On one hand it’s a psychological time traveling period drama. But it’s also a dark comedy science fiction story about a stalker sort of being stalked herself. The same dark humor and quick spurts of violence in Prevenge can be found in Timestalker but that’s about it (and even the violence in Timestalker is more gruesome and over the top than in Prevenge). This is new territory for Lowe that she handles masterfully.

RATS!

 

Rats! fits in perfectly with movies like Repo Man, Tapeheads or even Dude Where’s My Car? (judge all you want but that movie is funny). The basic plots are all similar on a surface level – an aimless stoner gets caught up in a plot involving guns, murder, nukes and/or bombs, aliens, the FBI or a close combination of everything in the case of Rats! After getting busted for tagging, a young punk/graffiti writer (“Raphael”) is used as a pawn by a crooked police officer to go undercover to try and bust his cousin who may be in possession of nukes. These nukes are just the tip of the iceberg as we’re exposed to one absurd semi-connected event after another.

On the most surface of levels, Rats! is the type of movie to be compared to the work of someone like Harmony Korine because of all the vulgarity, randomness, occult imagery and connections to death metal. But, the more you watch Rats! the more you’ll find it pulls from recognizable sources like Spielberg, DePalma, Tarantino and Lynch (at this point in time, what movie doesn’t).

Crrie / Jaws / Rats!

Reservoir Dogs / Rats!

Blue Velvet / Rats!

Un Chien Andalou / Blue Velvet / Rats!

I doubt Wild Style played a part in the development of this movie, but the graffiti element made me think Zoro and his tagging...

Wild Style / Rats!

If you’re looking for a contemporary comparison, this falls in line with the films of Joel Potrykuys (we cover Potrykus’ work a lot on this blog). The opening scene of Rats! Is very similar in tone to the opening scene of Potrykus’ Ape (both directors are also very reference-heavy so the connection makes even more sense). I doubt Rats! director Carl Fry is familiar with Potrykus but it’s interesting to me how both of their movies start with an aimless small town youth tagging up their town as a way to show rebellion.

 

Ape / Rats!

Rats! plays out like something made by the little brother of an old gen-xer. Someone who never actually saw a full episode of Pete & Pete or you can’t do that on television, but instead they heard about it from their older sibling and watched a couple of clips on youtube for context (based on everything I’ve said so far, it should come as no surprise that this movie relies heavily on nostalgia). Rats! is also the perfect movie to share with someone who loves to complain about things being too “woke”. The type of movie that disproves the whole; “you could NEVER make a movie like THIS today” or “everyone is SO easily offended”. At times you’ll find yourself questioning if this movie is completely satirical, completely offensive in a rebellious immature teenager kind of way, or a combination of the two. I’m still not completely sure but I do know that this movie is genuine and has heart. I’ll need to watch it a few more times but after my first viewing I can say I enjoyed it very much. I wouldn’t blindly recommend this to most people because there is a lot of gratuitous vulgarity and senseless violence. But if you don’t mind that kind of stuff and are looking for a surreal, fun and sometimes uncomfortable 79 minutes – this might something you’d enjoy.

10 RARE MOVIES THAT BELONG IN THE BLACK FILM CANON

 

I recently wrote a piece on Okayplayer.com about potentially updating the Black film canon. 

Click here or the image above to go to the article.

HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS

I was put on to this film at a very peculiar time. After a recent podcast appearance I found myself rethinking & second-guessing how I feel about intentional movie references & homages. I know I just said this in my previous post on Nickel Boys but in 2024 alone we got so many films that relied heavily on visual callbacks. Between new releases like The Substance (click here & here to see all the key homages), Cuckoo (The Brood), In A Violent Nature (click here & here to see all the homages I compiled), Longlegs (Silence Of The Lambs), Rebel Ridge (First Blood & Billy Jack), Nosferatu (beside it being a second remake, Eggers references Possession) and more – filmmakers seem to be focused more on pulling from the past or shouting out their cinematic heroes and less invested in trying something new & innovative. I’m starting to wonder if new releases were nothing more than mixtapes/compilations?

I say all this to say that while Hundreds Of Beavers is interesting, it’s also very much an homage-style movie. But I liked it! A lot! In fact – this movie is an homage of other homages. Hundreds Of Beavers is from the school of Guy Maddin who is a very reference-heavy director himself. He may not pay homage to more recognizable sources in the way Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez does, but Maddin’s films are almost always layered with tons of references & callbacks to folks like Bunuel, Murnau, Fritz Lang, Dreyer & David Lynch. This means that by proximity, Hundreds of Beavers is also inspired by those older filmmakers. I think that’s part of the reason why I like this movie so much. Had this film referenced anyone else I would have probably written it off but Guy Maddin is one of my favorite filmmakers and I kind of appreciate that we’ve come to a point where he’s a reference point. It’s about time he get shown the type of respect I think he’d appreciate (I would hope a reference-heavy filmmaker like Guy Maddin would appreciate being referenced himself by a younger filmmaker). Underrated, misunderstood & unsung are often overused to described artists but in the case of Guy Maddin I think these descriptors are fair. The art scene Maddin that came up in is rooted in references. He came to prominence alongside fellow reference-heavy filmmaker John Paizs (click here & here to read more about my love for Paizs).

I just felt like I was good friends with Luis Buñuel just because I watched his movies so often – Guy Maddin, thefilmstage

Un Chien Andalou / / Tales From The Gimli Hospital

As strange as Eraserhead is, it is a very honest portrait of personal...[pauses] When I saw that movie I didn’t need to know that David Lynch had been through an unplanned pregnancy and that he had stuck around long enough to see the baby through its infancy and … it was pretty exciting to me to see someone pull off a real tug-of-war but not just a two way tug-of-war, but one in so many different directions you couldn’t even count them. And that to me is pretty inspiring. So, I’ve always used Eraserhead and the Buñuel movies not as atmospheric role-models, I like the atmospheres in them, but I just like what they pull off psychologically with what is really broad strokes and really big gestures. It gets really baroque, gross at times, but still achieves moods and flavours of moods in your soul – unease, pleasure, excitement – that seems to be running very quickly through the inventory of all the things you feel in the course of a year, but you can get them in one 90 minute experience. That is really exciting to me, that art can do that. Lynch has fine tuned it over the years so that things are more sophisticated so that now you are really wondering where these feelings are coming from and stuff like that. The strokes aren’t as broad, but the… I don’t know why I keep talking about Lynch, but he is kind of doing what painting has been doing for years, and I’m not saying that his images are painterly, but that he is doing with narrative what painting does – Guy Maddin, Screenanarchy.com

Eraserhead / Tales From The Gimli Hospital

I just thought if I had that Guy Maddin style – that grainy 16mm look – mixed with my brand of humor, it would make for a unique movie. Because usually it’s one or the other. Comedies, especially nowadays, they’re not very sophisticated. It’s two guys standing in a room. Single shot. Single shot. Single shot. Let’s improvise – Mike Cheslik, onmilwaukee.com

My Winnipeg / Hundreds Of Beavers

We like Guy Maddin and Guy Maddin seems to like us! Definite influence. Mike Cheslik has seen all of his films  – Kurt Ravenwood, reddit

The Heart Of The World / Hundreds Of Beavers

The Saddest Music In The World / Hundreds Of Beavers

Careful / Hundreds Of Beavers

Cowards Bend The Knee / Hundreds Of Beavers

Careful / Hundreds Of Beavers

Tales From The Gimli Hospital / Hundreds Of Beavers

Tales From The Gimli Hospital / Hundreds Of Beavers

This isn’t the first time that Mike Cheslik pulled from the cinema of Guy Maddin… 

Right before I had the idea for "Lake Michigan Monster," I watched "Brand Upon the Brain" from Guy Maddin. And that was a big inspiration because obviously that’s in the same kind of visual style, but also because it took place on an island with a lighthouse and there were scenes on a lake – Mike Cheslik, onmilwaukee.com

Brand Upon The Brain / Lake Michigan Monster

The story & themes also owe a lot to Maddin. Putting aside the old timey silent film aesthetic, Hundreds of Beavers plays out like a Guy Maddin film. The story, which puts a major emphasis on the continent of North America in the dead of winter, deals with a fur trapper battling the elements and other subconscious sexual perversions during the 19th century. Those of you that are familiar with Maddin’s work can't deny that on paper this could easily be one of his own films (to be clear – Maddin did not invent the derivate style that he’s known for. He might be one of the best to do it but he doesn’t own it). Another non-visual Maddin-ism that looms over Hundreds Of Beavers is the budget. Mike Cheslik utilizes his imagination to make the best of his small budget in the same way Maddin has for almost 40 years.

The emphasis on the mascot suits, the appreciation for silent comedy gags and making the story seem big on such a small budget is all success in my book. I guess my only criticism/question is; will Mike Cheslik continue to associate himself with Guy Maddin or will he try to eventually shake the comparison?

NICKEL BOYS

I was kind of forced to have a relationship with this movie long before I saw it. Without even asking if I’ve actually seen Nickel Boys, a lot of folks assumed that I not only saw it but loved it. For the last few months this was one of those movies where people that kind of sort of get my taste would say stuff like "Marcus this looks like one of your movies that you would like!" I guess because the movie has an “artsy” aesthetic and has Black people in that I, the “artsy” movie-loving Black guy, would automatically like it. To some degree I get it. Based off of the trailer and out of context clips, this movie definitely lies somewhere between post-Thin Red Line Terrance Malick and Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight (two things I am fond of).

 

Nickel Boys director Ramell Ross has a relationship with the films of Malick…

 

l noticed the power of this sort of like roving and mounting poetry in Tree of Life, probably my all-time favorite film - Ramell Ross, metrograph.com

Tree Of Life / Nickel Boys

Tree Of Life / Nickel Boys

Tree Of Life / Nickel Boys

 

And Barry Jenkins developed a deep relationship with the film…

 

Nickel Boys. 1,000 per cent. Point blank, period. I watched it twice in like three days. Love, love, loved that movie. RaMell Ross, he is a true visionary and a true artist. That film is extraordinary - Barry Jenkins, MyTalk1071.com

Moonlight / Nickel Boys

 

Normally, I can’t stand when adults are intentionally evasive just because. That’s toddler behavior. But in the case of Nickel Boys, I intentionally avoided it for a long time because of all the expectations put on me to like it.

This is one of those very specific things that Black film fans have to deal with sometimes. The assumption that you automatically like something prestigious strictly because it stars or is made by a Black person. Then there’s the added awkwardness when you don’t meet the expectations put on you and have the audacity to have criticisms of said prestigious Black films instead of mindless praise. You become the guy that doesn’t like anything and are labeled a killjoy even though you have a 15+ year old blog praising hundreds of movies over the years...

I think Queen & Slim is one of the worst movies ever made. It exploited Black pain, made Black men look either dumb and/or devious, and just had too many non-practical moments for something that tried to be practical. I couldn’t stand Nia Dacosta’s Candyman remake. It was made for pretentious people that are chronically online that get their opinions on race from folks like Jemele Hill or Tariq Nasheed. If Sorry White People never existed my life would not be impacted in any way. Like Queen & Slim and the Candyman remake, Sorry White People was also made for pretentious Black folks and White liberals that are chronically online. I enjoy Get Out very much but can’t stand the dialogue and think-pieces around it. It should have been allowed to stay the silly dark comedy that it was meant to be but folks started taking it super serious and turned it in to something it wasn’t meant to be. I thought Sterling K Brown was excellent in Waves but the movie itself played in to awful stereotypes about young Black men. I enjoyed Non-fiction overall but aspects of that movie really felt like it was trying too hard for white acceptance. Notice how within the first 15-20 minutes of that movie all the Black characters go out of their way to announce their very important professions in a way that felt like they were essentially telling the audience: “hey - Black people can be doctors, professors and lawyers!” I understand there will always be a sector of non-Black people that will always have low expectations of us. A movie isn’t going to change that so why even bother trying to prove something to people that already have their minds made up about us?

You may not agree with everything I just said but don’t you find those opinions at least interesting or potentially engaging? These kinds of thoughts and opinions are far better than just saying something is “powerful” or “moving”. That gets boring after a while. 

I also tend to have a sometimes cynical reaction to Black pain and Black trauma on film (not in real life but on film). Part of that could be attributed to my northeast upbringing. Generally speaking, I find that post-Gen X Black people that grew up in the northeast region of America approach issues concerning race & racism on film much more cynically than Black folks from the south or the Midwest. But that’s a whole other conversation…

Black Trauma has just become a genre. I acknowledge my northeast cynicism towards race in modern film but at a certain point, I just get completely turned off when headlines and/or tweets about real Black pain are turned in to marketable entities.

 

With all that being said - I guess Nickel Boys was fine? It’s a tragic story about abuse, trauma racism and just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I definitely think you all should watch it but maybe watch it while being conscious of everything I’m saying right now. I know I said a lot without saying much about the actual subject but I guess I don't have too much to say about the actual movie. There are certainly lots of isolated/out of context moments of Malick-esque beauty. But it definitely is part of a bigger problem that’s happening in film right now. 

If you’re familiar with this blog or my Twitter presence then you know I appreciate a good homage or cinematic reference. But it’s starting to get a little out of hand. 30+ years ago we had three or four reference-heavy Pulp Fiction-like movies and now we get like 40 of them a year. In the last year we got The Substance, Cuckoo (a very loose rework of The Brood), In A Violent Nature, Longlegs (Silence Of The Lambs), Rebel Ridge (First Blood & Billy Jack), Nosferatu (beside it being another remake, Eggers references Possession). 

A lot of filmmakers seem to be focused more on pulling from the past or shouting out their cinematic heroes and less invested in trying something new. I’m starting to wonder if new releases are nothing more than collages/ mixtapes.