PINNLAND EMPIRE: multinational cinema

Showing posts with label multinational cinema. Show all posts

Monday, April 7, 2025

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

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

Wednesday, December 4, 2024

A FEW WORDS ON PERFECT DAYS UPDATED

Wim Wenders’ latest is one of those films that’ll be miscategorized as “simple”, “light” or even “boring” to those that watch it casually or on a surface level. But beyond the time-filling hobbies and Jeanne Dielman-esque day to day routines of the film’s main character lies a heavy story about regret and making peace with the past.

Putting aside the excess baggage and semi-ambiguous family drama of the film’s main character, I find myself wanting to live the life of someone like Hirayama. He’s a simple man that takes pride in his job, loves music on cassette and spends his free time taking photographs of trees. Having outlets & serious hobbies other than your job/work/career is incredibly important to one’s sanity. I can personally attest to this. My obsession with digging for things like music & movies keeps me sane. Hirayama’s love of photography, trees, physical media and cozy local bars keeps him sane. If he didn’t have those things he would be left alone with his thoughts of loneliness and the strained relationship with his family (it should be noted that his niece does make an effort to have some kind of a relationship with him).

Under a different director, the character of Hirayama would be a cartoonish iteration of Robert Crumb or Harvey Pekar. A curmudgeon that hates his own hobbies and prefers to be alone due to his hatred of most people. But Wim Wenders shows the positive side of niche hobbies and spending time alone.

Interestingly enough, Perfect Days is a film that plays in to my personal hobbies and healthy obsessions. On one hand, this is very much Wenders’ own movie but it also serves as a love letter to one Yasujiro Ozu. There’s lots of visual comparisons to be made form this film.

Autumn Afternoon / Perfect Days

of course Ozu's Spirit looms largely over the movie - Wim Wenders, Tiff.net

Tokyo Story / Perfect Days

I saw TOKYO STORY, and I stayed for the next three shows [of Ozu's films] that day until I stumbled out of the theatre late at night. I'd never seen anything that had so much shaken my world - Wim Wenders, AnOtherMagazine

Late Spring / Perfect Days

Late Spring / Perfect Days

A Story Of Floating Weeds / Perfect Days

Late Spring / Perfect Days

Equinox Flower / Perfect Days

Late Spring / Perfect Days

Good Morning / Perfect Days

Late Spring / Perfect Days

Tokyo Chorus / Perfect Days

Late Spring / Perfect Days

Good Morning / Perfect Days

Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family / Perfect Days

Tokyo Story / Perfect Days

I’ve never taken Wenders for a Tarkovsky guy, but this particular moment from Perfect Days (on the right) feels like an homage to the highway scene from Solaris (also shot in Japan).

Solaris / Perfect Days

There’s even a coincidental connection to Wenders’ former mentee Jim Jarmusch (I like to imagine these two guys exist in the same universe)

Paterson / Perfect Days

Perfect Days feels timeless with tons of replay value and is slowly becoming my go-to movie to put on when I can’t think of anything else to watch.

Wednesday, November 20, 2024

LOVE LIES BLEEDING

I went in to this with low expectations and came out pleasantly satisfied. Rose Glass’ sophomore feature didn’t break any new ground but it’s certainly a solid popcorn movie. I think some people are eager to make this out to be something more than it is due to the sexuality within the film but at the end of the day it’s nothing more than a fun crime story. And that’s totally fine. Contrary to what a lot of critics try to push nowadays, some movies exist for entertainment and/or a momentary escape. Everything isn’t some radical or political statement. On a surface level, Love Lies Bleeding rests somewhere between the cinema of Nicolas Winding Refn and a more polished/mimicked iteration of early Gregg Araki. I was eager to compare this to stuff like Wild at Heart & Thelma & Lousie but Glass herself made a point to avoid tapping in to those films. Also, making that kind of comparison is like calling something that’s slightly weird; “Lynchian”. It’s cheap.

Speaking of cheap and things being incorrectly labeled as “Lynchian” – there is a shot of a dark road at night in Love Lies Bleeding so I’m sure some critics jumped at the chance to compare it to Lost Highway.

Because so much of the DNA and ingredients of [Love Lies Bleeding] is so easily connectable to so many other films — Wild at Heart, Thelma and Louise, True Romance, anything with two lovers with guns and murder in extremity — I was wary about not wanting it to [revisit them] – Rose Glass, Hollywood Reporter

At this point, a movie like Thelma & Louise is so popular that you can’t avoid some type of subconscious influence but there’s no unique connection between the two films outside of the desert and two women kind of on the run…

I've never seen Thelma and Louise but that's so famous that even if you haven't seen it, you sort of feel like you have, so I'm sure it has an influence somewhere – Rose Glass, Theskinny.co.uk

Again – this feels like it was birthed from someone trying to pay homage to Gregg Araki with way more budget and a bit less grit. That may sound a little harsh but even with criticisms like that, I really did enjoy Love Lies Bleeding overall. I couldn’t find any interviews where Glass name-drops Araki as a source of inspiration but some of the similarities in the movie, intentional or not, are undeniable…

Doom Generation / Love Lies Bleeding

While the basic romance/crime story has been done before to some degree, Glass throws in things like female bodybuilding and random moments of surreality to try and stand out from other sweaty cigarette stenched crime capers (if you’re looking for a more direct comparison, Love Lies Bleeding is definitely a first cousin to something like Bound). There are a handful of scenes in this movie that seem a little random for the sake of being random but I’m honestly not mad at that.

This story is set in the 80’s and for someone not even born in that decade, Glass does an excellent job of not falling in to the trap of dressing all the characters up in neon windbreakers & rayban sunglasses. It seems like whenever a filmmaker wants to set a film in the 80s, the first thing they do is make everything neon & cheesy. The 80’s was not all MTV, Boy George & Madonna. I was born in 1981. My memory of the 80’s was a lot of cigarette smoke, ugly carpets (that trapped in all the cigarette smoke) and the color palettes were often browns & oranges as apposed to neon pinks & yellows. Again – Love Lies Bleeding has a bit too much sheen for a seedy 1980’s Reno, Nevada crime story, but there is a genuine attempt at trying to capture the 80s. The smells, the ashtrays, the faded jeans, etc…

The small handful of cinematic references that Glass openly pulls from are also a bit outside of the box. Instead of the aforementioned Thelma & Louise or Wild At Heart, Glass pulls from sources like Paul Verhoeven and 1960s B-movies. These influences are even more interesting to me because her first film, Saint Maud, pulled from folks like Bergman & Polanski (a lot of people claimed there was Tarkovsky in Saint Maud but according to Glass, she wasn’t very familiar with his work at the time).

Showgirls was just one of those films that I remember watching when I was probably too young to watch it quite late one night on TV - Rose Glass, The Hollywood Reporter

Showgirls / Love Lies Bleeding

Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman / Love Lies Bleeding

Contrary to what one might assume, the Refn similarities lie in the music and the random spurts of violence and not the fascination with trying to replicate the 80’s as some sort of Andy Warhol/David Lachapelle/pop art fever dream.

Wednesday, November 6, 2024

ONE MORE SHOT

One More Shot joins that elite list of sequels that surpasses it’s predecessor. I wouldn’t exactly call it Godfather Part 2 or Aliens, or The Empire Strikes Back, but it is better than One Shot (2021). And to be clear – One Shot is great. It wound up on my best of 2021 list (and this will more than likely be on my best of 2024). But where the first film may have a had what some would consider "slow moments", One More Shot is just non-stop in the best way possible.

Thanks to films like Extraction, the newer Mad Max films and the John Wick series, there’s a place for fast pace action films that take little no breaks. Even when punches aren’t being thrown and bullets aren’t flying, the tension in One More Shot is so intense.

One More Shot / Extraction

There's a few tense moments early on in the film that borrow heavily from a scene in Children Of Men...

Children Of Men / One More Shot

Tension is the unsung hero of this film. Director James Nunn pulls from his influences like Michael Mann & Steven Spielberg all throughout the film…

It was actually watching JURASSIC PARK in the cinema when I was 9 years old and I just fell in love with the idea of making movies and telling stories and bringing things to life - James Nunn, easternfilmfans.co.uk

Jurassic Park /
One More Shot

Heat / One More Shot

One More Shot plays out like the most basic yet fun video game with multiple levels. It picks up literally seconds after the first part. There’s no pause or intermission. We’re thrown right in to the thick of it in the opening scene. The hostage from the first film has been secured but there’s another “level” our hero Scott Adkins must go through to get him and his family to safety. In addition to a lot more action and intense moments, the film adds Michael Jai White to the cast as the main villain.
While White’s addition to the film is sparse, it’s still the high point. One More Shot succeeds because they use the formula of a lot of older action films where we get the final one-on-one showdown between the main protagonist and the main antagonist that’s been teased throughout the film. Michael Jai White is a varsity letterman when it comes carrying the final fight on his shoulders (see Skin Trade & Blood and Bone for further examples of this). And at this point, White & Adkins hove so much history & on-screen chemistry that it’s probably impossible for those two to choreograph a disappointing fight scene. White & Adkins use a combination of modern MMA (that they both helped popularize) from the John Wick films and the early MMA fighting style found in Bruce Lee films…

John Wick 3 / One More Shot

The Chinese Connection / One More Shot

The beauty of One More Shot is that you don’t actually have to watch One Shot first in order to enjoy things or know what's going on. I strongly suggest watching One Shot because it’s very good, but I almost prefer folks watch the sequel first and then treating One More Shot like a prequel.

Tuesday, November 5, 2024

THE SUBSTANCE: SUPPLIMENTAL MATERIAL UPDATED

Carrie / The Substance

Here are a few more comparisons that didn't make it in to my original post about The Substance. Click here to read my initial thoughts and to see the original comparisons I made. Also make sure to click here to see Coralie Fargeatt's Letterboxd interview where she breaks down some of her visual influences from The Thing to The Hunchback Of Notre Dame...