Hello and welcome once again to Five Cool Things, the bi-weekly series where I talk about all the fun, interesting, and cool things I’ve discovered since the last time. This week I’m talking about a Japanese horror comic, two films starring Jessie Buckley, a Danish thriller about movie nerds by Nicolas Winding Refn, my love of physical media, and a new Dune movie. Let’s get to it.
Uzumaki by Junji Ito
My daughter has gotten big into manga and anime. She’s been telling me about Junji Ito for a while, but his books are difficult to find around here, and they are expensive on Amazon. I randomly stumbled upon this one at a local used shop and snatched it up quickly.
Buy UzumakiBeing a good dad (and someone who is casually interested in manga), I decided to read it first before giving it to my daughter. I’m glad I did because this made me an instant fan.
In a small Japanese village, a man becomes obsessed with spirals. He sees them everywhere – in nature, architecture, and even his food. He begins drawing them and making them out of anything he can find. His obsession turns to self-harm, and he eventually dies. When they cremate him, his ashes turn to spirals. They float into a nearby lake.
Another man makes pottery from the mud he obtains from that lake. His pottery turns to spirals when he bakes them. Many others become obsessed with spirals. Strange supernatural things begin to happen. Grotesque horror reigns down on the town. People turn to spirals. Violence erupts. Madness ensues.
The book is mostly a series of short stories all set in the same town, all about how different people are affected by the spiral curse. Eventually, a more linear narrative occurs, focusing on a couple of people trying to escape the town. The pencil art is weird, expressive, and grotesque.
It is truly a horror manga, deeply unsettling. I loved it.
The Bride!
Maggie Gyllenhaal’s reconfiguring of The Bride of Frankenstein is a big, bold film stuffed to the gills with ideas and references to other films and literature. It is a lot to take in all at once. It didn’t always work for me, and I found it dragged on a bit too long, but what did work, I loved, and I’m so glad films with big swings like this are still being made.
Buy The Bride of FrankensteinJessie Buckley stars as Ada (and as Mary Shelley who introduces the film from Purgatory, stating that she had more ideas for her Frankenstein story before she died), a 1920s gangster’s moll who gets possessed by Shelley in an attempt for her to tell the rest of her story. That doesn’t go well, and she gets murdered for her trouble.
Frankenstein (Christian Bale) – and yes, I know he’s technically Frankenstein’s monster, but he calls himself Frankenstein, or Frank, in this film, so you have to roll with it – calls on Dr. Cornelia Euphronious (Annette Benning) to make him a mate. He’s lonely, you see. They dig up Ada and make Frank a bride.
One thing leads to another, and they find themselves on the run from two law enforcement agents (Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz) in a manner that will surely remind you of Bonnie and Clyde. There is a lot of fun in these scenes. Gyllenhaal turns things up to 11 with loads of joy, kinetic energy, and even a few dance moves.
Eventually things slow down, and we get a little introspection as our two living corpses try and figure out what it means to be alive. I grew a little restless by the end. Not everything works; there are numerous threads that don’t get pulled quite hard enough. But so much of this film is a delight, I can’t wait to watch it again.
Bleeder
The Criterion Channel is running a collection of films they are calling “VHS Forever” in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the VCR being introduced to the public. It features a wide variety of films from all over the world, all of which feature VHS tapes in some way.
Buy BleederI randomly chose this film from Nicolas Winding Refn and immediately fell in love. It begins with one of the greatest opening scenes I’ve seen in a long while. The camera flies through a video store. It is the type of place with dozens of rooms, like an old house that has been converted into a store. The walls are lined with movies, tables are covered with them, and they spread out onto the floor. The camera moves across them closely and quickly.
Lenny the clerk (Mads Mikkelsen) sits behind the counter watching a kung fu movie. A man holds up a movie, asking if they have anything else like it. Lenny breaks down the numerous genres they have in each room. Then he starts listing off directors in a seemingly endless list – both popular, arthouse, and obscure. His manager, Kitjo (Zlatko Burić) comes in and names even more directors. These are film nerds. My kind of people.
The customer smiles approvingly and then shyly asks if they have any porno. There is an awkward beat, and then the manager says that they do and takes him to a back room with hundreds of pornographic tapes. Then he starts listing off all the types of porn they have, in the same manner he rattled off all those directors.
Lenny and Kitjo are friends with Leo (Kim Bodnia), a racist and a knucklehead. The film mostly follows these three friends as they hang out and watch movies. Lenny is shy and awkward. Leo has a mean streak. When his girlfriend becomes pregnant, he becomes sullen and abusive. Her gangster boyfriend doesn’t like that, and the film turns dark and violent.
If you liked Drive by Nicolas Winding Refn, then this makes for a great companion piece.
Hamnet
Chloé Zhao’s latest film tells the story of how the loss of William Shakespeare’s son Hamnet moved him to create his timeless masterpiece, Hamlet. Or at least how the film was sold. I went into the film expecting to find Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and his wife, Agnes (Jessie Buckley), deep into their marriage, expecting a child. We’d maybe have a few scenes with the happy family and their young son. Then he’d die, and the rest of the film would be about Shakespeare trying to write the play.
Buy HamnetThat is not at all what this film is about. It begins with their courtship. Then their marriage. Then the birth of their oldest daughter. Then they have twins, Hamnet and Judith. Judith nearly dies during childbirth, and Agnes perpetually fears she will lose her. Then she does get sick – the plague – and nearly dies. But it is Hamnet who succumbs.
The film’s focus is on Agnes. Shakespeare comes and goes off to London to write. But she is home in Stratford with the children. She experiences the fear and the loss acutely. Buckley’s performance is astonishing. It just won her an Oscar.
Truth be told, I found most of the film a bit lacking. That is probably in part due to me thinking the film was going to be one thing and it being something else. That’s not the film’s fault, but it mucked with my enjoyment of it. The acting is great, but the love story failed to properly move me. Buckley’s performance is moving when she loses her son, but I never truly connected to her children, and so I didn’t feel that loss all that much.
But then the film does move into how this loss influenced Hamlet. Agnes goes to a performance of the play, and somehow watching it being performed while also watching Agnes’s reaction to it connected very deeply to my own life, my own feelings about Shakespeare (I like him), and my own family. I bawled like a baby. I look forward to watching it again, maybe this time knowing what the film is doing instead of what I think it should be doing will help me to like that first part better. If not, that last act is still just wonderful.
Excalibur
A few weeks ago I made Excalibur, the John Boorman-directed, star-studded telling of the King Arthur legend, my Pick of the Week. I hadn’t planned to as my previous viewing of the film found the film to be a beautiful spectacle but kind of a mess.
Buy ExcaliburBut then, as I was looking through all the extras that Arrow is providing with the set, including posters, postcards, and a big booklet, not to mention a nice UHD scan and an alternate TV cut, I talked myself into purchasing it.
I now have it in my hands, and it is a thing of beauty. I immediately watched the film again, and yeah, it is still a bit of a mess. Boorman throws nearly every Arthurian legend at the screen and sees what sticks. But it looks amazing. The sets and costume design are incredible, and the cinematography is just beautiful. The new UHD transfer is gorgeous.
I’ve been a physical media collector for many, many years. I’ve collected VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, and now 4K UHD. I love movies. I love having copies of movies on my shelves where I know I can pick them up at any time and watch them. I really love these big special editions with great transfers and lots of cool stuff. When people ask me why I still collect physical media in this age of streaming, it is this type of set that I point to with pride.
Dune: Part Three
I have to be honest here for a second. I thought Dune was over. I mean, I know Frank Herbert wrote a whole bunch of books and there is a whole expanded universe to explore, but I thought Denis Villeneuve had completed the Dune story he wanted to tell in cinema.
Buy Dune 2-Film CollectionI guess I was wrong.
I watched the first two films (and I watched the second one twice), but gun to my head, I couldn’t tell you what happened in them. The lore behind Dune is massive and confusing. I guess I forgot there was going to be a third part. But I really did love the first two films so I’m excited there is going to be another one.
