Moot Point

1. 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould (François Girard, 1993): This was a nice break from horror movies. I know a lot of people who found it dull, but I loved it. It was nice to watch something so cerebral and quiet after so many movies that you can kind of ruin if you think about. My favourite of the segments:
2. The Virgin Spring (Ingmar Bergman, 1960): I can’t believe I hadn’t seen this before. I think it is the first rape revenge movie. I spent the last half-hour with my hand over my mouth; the actual revenge-getting scene is surprisingly violent and in a way that I wasn’t prepared for, even though I’ve been watching basically nothing but gorno for the last couple of weeks. It’s completely amazing when the bad guys try to sell the daughter’s dress back to the mother: she looks at it for a minute and realizes exactly what happened and then decides what to do and you can see it all in her face. The tree scene is pretty amazing; Bergman hardly uses any long shots, so it really stands out to see him all tiny taking down a tree with nothing but his bare hands and his rage.
3. Haxan: Witchcraft Through The Ages (Benjamin Christensen, 1922): You guys this was amazing. It had body horror and confusing postmodern blurring of documentary and fiction in 1922. There’s something so prurient about the way it starts out factually describing the backward beliefs of various situations and how witchcraft trials would be and then lingeringly portrays it with a surprising amount of nudity. Then there is the hilarious final chapter where they link medieval signs of witchcraft with “modern” notions of hysteria. Oh, Sweden.
4. There Will Be Blood (P.T. Anderson, 2007): So I guess the message is that capitalism makes people just as crazy as religion? The most awesome part is Daniel Day-Lewis’s performance. Which is good because it’s basically a character study in which the entire plot is “How would Daniel Plainview react to this? What about this?” It reminded me a lot of Citizen Kane, actually: Kane and Plainview aren’t that different, and they’re both Big American Myths About America, if you know what I mean.
5. Hostel: Part II (Eli Roth, 2007): This wasn’t as good as the first one, but it was still pretty awesome. One thing that sets Roth apart from the horror pack is how totally unapologetic the films are about the line between something funny and something that’s deeply offensive. Like, he has a guy actually slip with his circular saw and cut into this chick’s face. It’s awful, but there’s a way in which it’s just a joke taken too far. You’re either going to admire his balls or be totally disgusted. To be fair, the movie also features a graphic castration.
6. Wolf Creek (Greg McLean, 2005): This isn’t as torture-y, but it does get points for the whole “based on a true story” thing, even if it’s only sort-of true (like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a clear influence in many ways), because that makes it seem more like the movie’s exploiting a real-life tragedy for entertainment value. Hence, more scandal! It’s not as graphic as a lot of the American gornos, but it kind of works better to only get a brief horrifying glimpse of a dismembered body; there’s the constant sense that you never know what’s just off-camera.
7. Saw II (Darren Lynn Bousman, 2005): I am probably in the minority, but I actually thought this was better than the first Saw. Having more people interacting with each other and having to watch the horrible tortures people are put through made the whole thing a bit more interesting. I wish that Bousman wasn’t so obsessed with the crazy rock video cutting. I realize the quick cuts are kind of a way to show creepy stuff with skin getting cut off and so forth, but it’s really annoying and just takes me out of the wincey-ness.

You know, I’m beginning to think I am desensitized to cinematic violence.