At the request of director Grzegorz Cisiecki, I cautiously entered in to his 2007 short film entitled “Dym,” and hoped to see what would be the seeds of a great director in the making. While in the end “Dym” leans toward being a demo reel for work in the states, “Dym” is also a striking short film delving in to the psychosexual madness our main character endures when experiencing a turbulent romance with his girlfriend.
Tag Archives: Arthouse
Black Swan (2010)
Director Darren Aronofsky has always had a talent for delving in to the human psyche and offering us deeper more complex looks in to our souls and perceptions of reality. “Requiem for a Dream” was a film constantly teetering between a life of misery and woe distorted by our own desires for something better, while “The Fountain” destroyed all of our notions of time and infinity in a world not bound by simple quantities of hours and days. His master opus is a work of art that transforms the world of Nina Sayers in to something of a personal hell where she is incapable of escaping and is seeking a perfection that she may never be able to obtain. “Black Swan” is a masterpiece, a classic trail of perceived normality in to madness, a world of light consumed by shadows, and our very own minds becoming the key to our unraveling of consciousness and reality.
Amer (2009)
Visually and viscerally, “Amer” is a film that is a throwback to the classic Giallo thrillers, but deep down it is much more of an academic breakdown of the Giallo sub-genre and not so much a straight forward giallo film. True it has shades of the visual flourishes with uses of color and specific dashes of sharp editing that suck us in to the narrative, all the while invoking memories of “Suspiria” and “Tenebre” upon which both directors call on to create something of an evocative sexual thriller, in the end. “Amer” is admittedly an exhausting film and that counts as a criticism and a recommendation.
Graphic Sexual Horror (2009): Special Edition (DVD)
In spite of what you may think of Brent, the founder of insex.com, the infamous bondage and torture website featuring gorgeous models being bound gagged and drowned, the man was prophetic in his use as the internet to engage users in anonymous guiltless sexual interaction that paved the way for reality shows, thousands of voyeur and fetish websites, and also helped streamline the concept of live feeds as we know it. “Graphic Sexual Horror” is a documentary that’s almost impossible to sit through. While I am someone who is fascinated with the darkest of sexual taboos, founder of insex.com, Brent, is an unabashed lover of S&M, Torture, and bondage, and takes great pride in depicting small filmed sequences involving women being tortured in some of the most horrific ways possible.
Emily in the A.M. (2010)
Director Daniel Brown conducts his short drama much in the vein of Scorsese’s underrated gem “After Hours” in which he uses the exploits of a midnight stroll through the city experiencing various exploits with wackos and locals as a form of our character exploring something about themselves. Alison Strycharz gives a very somber and heartfelt performance as the lovelorn Emily, a young girl whose own undoing may be her inability to take a hint and as such becomes a pariah in her own relationship. Confronting her boyfriend one night after an attempt to spend time with him, Emily moves out on her own in to a new city and finds herself incapable of moving on with her life. There, she does anything to pass the time and wallowing in her own memories with him that may all just be lies she told herself to sleep easily at night.
The Girlfriend Experience (2009)
We live in a world where fantasies are manifested in the drop of a dime. We can access our fantasies online, we can purchase them, and with enough money we have the ability to live out our fantasies through any means we deem necessary. “The Girlfriend Experience” is about those fantasies and the lengths we’re willing to go to have them lived out. Soderbergh examines the man of today and what situations would indicate their need for companionship. Chelsea is an escort but not the typical one.
Funny Games U.S. (2008) (DVD)
I recently watched “The Strangers” in theaters, and it was a thriller very heavily reminiscent of “Funny Games” in where our villains simply are. And the studios heavily marketed on the momentum from Haneke’s film to make it seem like a branch off from “Funny Games.” That’s likely because with both films our villains remain ambiguous. I never understood why we have to know the motives of our villains in horror films, these days. Why do we need to know about their life, or tragedy, and why do they need to have a theme of revenge or financial gain? Why can’t they just be psychopathic murderers who simply crossed you and seek to kill you?