Tusk (2014)

November 14th, 2018

Directed by: Kevin Smith

Written by: Kevin Smith

Starring: Justin Long, Michael Parks, Haley Joel Osment

Budget: $3,000,000

Quote: "Are you really mourning your loss of humanity? I don't understand. Who in the hell would want to be human? God Almighty... In all of my travels, I've only ever known a human to be an ocean of shit."

Trivia: According to Kevin Smith, most of the budget was used to obtain the rights to use the song "Tusk" by Fleetwood Mac.


Like a lot of nineties kids, I fell in love with Kevin Smith's comedy movies: Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy. Something about them seemed to captured the feeling of the mid-nineties and I couldn't help but relate to the characters hilarious struggles to understand who they were and what their place was in the world. My admiration for Smith's comedy is one reason why I was so taken aback by how dark of a movie he was able to create. I knew Smith was capable of creating a serious movie (I had enjoyed his Red State) but didn't know that he could create such a disturbing picture. The movie starts out innocent enough with an expected kidnapping but then goes from zero to sixty in a matter of seconds. The visuals and special effects of turning Justin Long into a Walrus are much more disturbing than one might have thought (the idea sounds funny in theory but becomes a nightmare in practice). Michael Parks (Bill's pimp dad in Kill Bill Vol. 2), Haley Joel Osment, and even a surprise part by Johnny Depp add to the enjoyment of the film. The movie is part Stephen King's Misery and part David Cronenberg's The Fly and is guaranteed to cause either disgust or laughter, but probably both. Either way, Kevin Smith has created a true nightmare that will make it hard to ever look at Justin Long the same way again.

The Night of the Virgin (2017)

October 29, 2018

Directed by: Roberto San Sebastián

Written by: Guillermo Guerrero

Starring: Javier Bódalo, Miriam Martín, Víctor Amilibia

Quote: "I don't know how long it would have taken me to leave if not well..." "I hadn't rescued you."

Trivia: Javier Bódalo did all his stunts. As a result of that, he went several times to the hospital. Production had a one week break, so he could recuperate.


Overview: This movie is absolutely disgusting! One of the most repulsive movies I have seen in a long while. That being said, I loved it. I will probably never watch it again (definitely never watch it while eating dinner again) but I really enjoyed it and thought it was a really well made horror film. The movie is actually funny in an extremely dark way. Filmed entirely inside an apartment, the movie gives the viewer a claustrophobic sense while the myriad bodily fluids that the poor protagonist is covered with is revolting. However there is something about Javier Bodalo's performance that makes the film rather funny. We really feel for the dumb kid. As the movie unfolds, I was left wondering how far are they going to take this? The answer: They took it to the absolute limit. Funny, disgusting, and wonderful.

Starry Eyes (2014)

October 18, 2018

Directed by: Kevin Kölsch, Dennis Widmyer

Written by: Kevin Kölsch, Dennis Widmyer

Starring: Alex Essoe, Amanda Fuller, Noah Segan

Budget: Partly funded through a $50,000 kickstarter.

Quote: "Ambition - the blackest of human desires. Everyone has it, but how many act on it'

Trivia: The film started as a Kickstarter project and was aided by the support of author Chuck Palahniuk's ('Fight Club') fans. 100 donors to the project had their names thanked in Chuck's 2014 novel 'Beautiful You.' Co-writer/co-director Dennis Widmyer runs Chuck's official website and manages his social media.


Starry Eyes is one of those films that I loved but will probably never watch again because it is just too hard to stomach. It is a body horror movie about the transformation one girl must endure to become the starlet she dreams of being. Alex Essoe, as Sarah, does an absolutely incredible job turning her timid character into first a horrible monster and then into something beyond herself, an icon. Whether this movie is a metaphor for the Hollywood system or a look at the darkness beneath the glitter and glamour of Tinseltown, the film industry has never seemed more terrifying. As Sarah's transformation continues, the viewer is taken though the long revolting process. Both disgusting and intriguing, this movie is not for those who are easily queasy. One viewing was enough for me.

Tetsuo, the Iron Man (1989)

October 8, 2018

Directed by: Shin'ya Tsukamoto

Written by: Shin'ya Tsukamoto

Starring: Tomoro Taguchi, Kei Fujiwara, Nobu Kanaoka

Budget:

Quote: "Together, we can turn this fucking world to rust!"

Trivia: The film was based on a play that Shin'ya Tsukamoto had written, directed and performed in college.







I watched this movie on Monday and it's already Saturday. Usually, I write these movie writeups the next day, but this movie simply left me dumbfounded. There seems to be so much going on in the film that I cannot put into words. While the movie is at its core a body horror about a man slowly being transformed into a collection of metal, it is heavily influenced by the surrealism of David Lynch's films (especially Eraserhead), the black and white landscapes, lighting, and camerawork of expressionist cinema (Metropolis and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari), cyberpunk fetishism, and the bleak manmade distopian despair in the writings of J.G. Ballard. The movie is both revolting and beautiful. The industrial soundtrack, frenetic acting, and stop-and-go animation give the film an intensity that creates an anxiety in the viewer that never lets up.

Rabid (1977)

July 19, 2018

Directed by: David Cronenberg

Written by: David Cronenberg

Starring: Marilyn Chambers, Frank Moore, Joe Silva

Budget: $530,000 (CAD)

Quote: "I sure as hell don't want to become the Colonel Sanders of plastic surgery."

Trivia: The song that plays on the radio in Hart's workshop is Marilyn Chambers' own disco single "Benihana" (about 25 minutes into the film).




Rabid is one of David Cronenberg's first feature films and he will go on to incredible success with Scanners and The Fly. However, it was in this film that Cronenberg lays out many of the themes that he will look at in his future movies. Cronenberg's movies are all "body" movies which look at changes in the body or made to the body, our own connection to technology, and how both these aspects tie into our own sexuality. His movies set forth the road map that the Netflix show Black Mirror will go down almost forty years later. People, rightfully so, praise Black Mirror for its brazen look at the areas of ourselves and our society that no one wants to look at, but it should be known Cronenberg was doing this long ago. Marilyn Chambers (the actress from the early pornographic movie Behind the Green Door) does some incredible acting as the film's star. Also, the film really made me think about the Zombie and Vampire genres and where this film should be categorized.

We Are the Flesh (2016)

July 13, 2018

Directed by: Emiliano Rocha Minter

Starring: Noe Hernandez, Maria Evoli, Diego Gamaliel

Quotes: Love doesn't exist. Only demonstrations of love.

Trivia: This is the fourth film in Mexico to achieve the highest rating, which is the "D" certificate. Only this film as well as Eli Roth's Hostel (2005), Michael Winterbottom's 9 Songs (2004) and Gaspar Noé's Love (2015) have gotten this certificate, which is usually given to pornographic films.








We Are the Flesh is not a horror film in the traditional sense, although there are some extremely horrific scenes. We Are the Flesh is a surrealist look at what it takes to survive in the modern world. For whatever reason, Mexico has always been the center of surrealist films. Mexico is where the two great surrealist filmmakers, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Luis Bunuel, did much of their best work. While these two directors were not Mexican, Jodorowky was Chilean and Bunuel was French, the made Mexico the capital of surrealist filmmaking. We Are the Flesh, also filmed in Mexico, built on the work of these directors especially Jodorowsky's Holy Mountain. However, We Are the Flesh definitely carves out its own niche in the annals of film. The movie is but revolting and beautiful. The camera work, use of colors, and acting are as good as it gets. I am writing this discussion three days after watching the film and I have been thinking about it constantly since.