New year, very similar me watching movies but making an effort to get myself to the cinema more often. I've got little talent for activism or advocacy but I do okay at trying to be the "change I'd like to see in the world." In this case: bundling up, hopping on the bus, and heading out to see movies. So far I made it out to screenings of EO, Holy Spider, Infinity Pool, and Women Talking. None of them rose to the ranks of my new favorite film but there's something commendable about each of them (seriously don't let Holy Spider blow past you if it sounds like your thing) and perhaps more importantly - I really enjoyed spending more time at the movies. I plan to spend even more time in darkened rooms with strangers in February due to the convergence of some absolutely killer local programming. The Walker Art Center will be running their Film Independent Spirit Awards screenings, The Trylon is running a poliziotteschi series, the Heights is doing their Film Noir festival with a focus on Argentina(!), and again the Trylon is hosting Dan Halsted showing his print of 7 Grandmasters which I wrote about for Persiphere. I'll run out of time and energy before I get to see everything I'd like to but I couldn't be more happy to log some hours watching great movies and (hopefully) seeing some familiar faces.
It's nice to feel some engagement with current films but I still wanted to focus older, new-to-me watches this month so here are the films that have stuck with me:
Back to the Wall (1958) - The final film I watched as part of Kino Lorber's excellent three film French Film Noir collection. I ultimately prefer Édouard Molinaro's other contribution to the set - Witness in the City - but Back to the Wall is still a superb noir film. Gorgeously shot with excellent performances from Gerard Oury and Jeanne Moreau but even the smaller parts were well realized. The set from Kino doesn't have much in the way of features but I'm thrilled just to have such terrific transfers of the films.
The Cop (Un Conde) (1970) - Unrelentingly hardboiled, gritty French crime from Yves Boisset. The 70s is virtually synonymous with this kind of morally ambiguous, pessimistic, anti-authoritarian crime fiction and I'd argue The Cop does it as well or better than many of the films that would follow it. The cast is absurdly stacked if you're a fan of French and Italian movies of the era - Michel Bouquet is perfect and is backed by Gianni Garko, Michel Constantin, Adolfo Celi, Bernard Fresson, Françoise Fabian, and many others. I also have to mention that there is a positively savage dummy drop early in the film so you know it was going to make my list.
Armageddon (1977) - Directed by Alain Jessua and produced by and starring Alain Delon, my understanding is that Armageddon was a production set upon by clashing egos and on-set tension. The final film honestly feels a bit unfinished but it still had enough going for it that I'd like to seek out Jessua's other films. There is a metric ton of fantastic 70s European location footage spanning multiple countries, Jean Yanne's antagonist is compelling even where Delon falls a bit flat, and there's some wonderfully idiosyncratic music from Astor Piazzolla which may strike a familiar chord with 12 Monkeys fans.
The Magnificent One (1973) - I promise this is the last French film on the list but I had to include it due to sheer lunacy. Only Jean Paul Belmondo could convincingly play both a despondent author of cheap spy novels and the cartoonishly overblown parody of secret agent heroics the author dreams of in the same film. A lot of The Magnificent One is very silly and some of it is positively stupid - but it's also shockingly gory in parts. My mouth was literally hanging open as gouts of blood poured out of the machine gunned enemy agents. I'm a man of simple tastes sometimes.
El Pico 2 (1984) - While I didn't participate in any formal challenges in January, I did challenge myself to try get some of my backlog of physical media watched. As much as Navajeros knocked me absolutely flat in 2021, I'd been putting off tackling the rest of Severin's Quinqui collection. Things got off to a moderately rocky start with the first El Pico film. I could still appreciate it but it didn't have nearly the same narrative explosivity as Navajeros, didn't use music and setting nearly as effectively, and while I don't mind a focus on family drama, I felt that it delved into a kind of cheap sentimentality. El Pico 2 takes things in a harder, darker direction, embraces that sense of place again, and kicks a lot of the schmaltz to the curb. Unfortunately I don't think you can have one without the other and they're deeply interconnected. Still, I think it's worth your time to watch both and if you're struggling with the first - don't skip the second.
Cannibal Man (1972) - More Eloy de la Iglesia that had been sitting on my shelf waiting for the right moment. Cannibal Man is stylish, gruesome, and it teases out some interesting concepts around economic frustration, sexual frustration, and identity. It moves at an awkward, languid pace which feels at odds with the serial killer story at its heart, but it does add a certain surrealism to the proceedings. Though he continues to keep killing people and descending further into a horrific situation - Vicente Parras' Marcos does it with the least agency imaginable. It's as though he lacks any creativity or sufficient analytical power to either flee or face the consequences before things get even worse. I couldn't help but be reminded of Dahmer and his nightmarish apartment - though Marcos isn't driven by the same sex/death obsessions (and never does commit any cannibalism). It sounds as though Spanish censorship interfered with de la Iglesia's initial vision of the story which would have featured much younger actors to play Marcos and his more affluent neighbor (Nestor played by Eusebio Poncela) as well as featuring a more explicit homosexual relationship between them. I feel like that would have made for a more successful final product, but Parras and Poncela are still very good and the fact that you have a gay director with two gay leads portraying a story with some gay elements in Franco's Spain makes for a compelling cultural document. I highly recommend the special features on Severin's disc for this as well.
Hotel Fear (1978) - I was not an avid participant in Giallo January this year but I did make room for a couple including Hotel Fear which I apparently ordered a copy of and promptly forgot all about. One of a handful of films directed by Francesco Barilli who also helmed the fantastic The Perfume of the Lady in Black, Hotel Fear is similar in that it retains a few of the giallo elements but is more of a measured, hypnotic, dreamy kind of mystery story. It still delivers on the sleaze factor but feels much more in line with a psychological thriller than any sort of proto-slasher. You can absolutely consider me a Barilli fan - I only wish he had made more of these eurocult oddities.
Spetters (1980) - Hoo boy. I'm not sure what I want to say about Spetters and I already feel like I'm going to have to defend my impressions of the film. I picked up a copy some time ago on sale and just never found the moment to put it on. I didn't know much about it other than it was not the early Verhoeven film most people would point to as his best work. It's got a lot going on - it's a sports movie (motorbiking), it's a coming of age film about three young men, it's a believably working class story, and it's also very much about trauma and survival. Spetters has a surprisingly upbeat mood for a movie that is filled with pessimism and even sequences that are best described as horrific. The main characters are charismatic but unlikeable at the same time. The young men have bouts of misogyny, extreme homophobia, and brutality which presents significant barriers to investing in their story. Verhoeven regular Renee Soutendijk is as electric a screen presence as ever, but her character seems so ruthlessly opportunistic that she could be difficult to relate to. Bad things happen to these characters including a savage rape scene - the aftermath of which is not at all what a modern viewer would expect and one that Verhoeven received considerable criticism for at the time. Verhoeven's treatment of rape in his films is something I'm probably not qualified to write much about other than it occupies a particularly Verhoeven-ian headspace that is as much about power dynamics as it is about violation. He would go on to direct a related controversial scene in Flesh + Blood and then essentially make a whole film about it in Elle. I should mention that I don't think Verhoeven handles this particularly well in Spetters and I reject his premise here even if I see the kernel of something he would approach with clearer intent later. What I could appreciate about Spetters was the unflinching frankness of Verhoeven's presentation. People are stupid and they grow up in shitty situations and they do what they need to do to get ahead and sometimes they come out the other side better human beings - or at least more empathetic ones - but sometimes they don't come out at all. Maybe I'm being dazzled by Verhoeven's cinematic mastery - it's gorgeous, the music is amazing, the motorbike scenes are fantastic - but Spetters left me thinking and reading and feeling in ways not a lot of films do.
