The Green Knight, 12 October 2021, DVD via Redbox
Strangely enough, I actually did not know anything specific about this movie except it was, like, about Gawain and had some trippy medieval imagery? (If you're not familiar with the tale, I highly and insistently recommend Daniel Ortberg's retelling over at The Toast.) Plus, Dev Patel. But honestly, we open with this image:
Like, what the heck?
This movie is triiiiiippy, and if you're not up on your Arthurian myths, they are not gonna hold your hand, friend. Dev Patel is King Arthur's nephew, Morgan le Fay's son. He isn't a knight, just a lad hanging out in court. Then one Christmas, Guinevere gets a helluva chain letter and it is the challenge of the Green Knight.
"This is how silly men perish."
"Or how brave men become great."
"Why greatness? Why is goodness not enough?"
Sarita Choudhury, playing Gawain's mother Morgan le Fay, kind of mesmerizes me.
This movie is surreal and beautiful. There's always been this inherent tension in Arthurian myths, that mash of pagan and Christian imagery that philosophically shouldn't exist but ever overlap. This is it, though. This is it right here.
"My lady. Are you alive or are you a spirit?"
"What is the difference? I just need my head."
"When you go, your footprints will fill with grass. Moss shall cover your tombstone, and as the sun rises, green shall spread over all, in all its shades and hues. This verdigris will overtake your swords and your coins and your battlements and, try as you might, all you hold dear will succumb to it. Your skin, your bones. Your virtue."
, 21 October 2021, streamed via HBO Max
It has literally been decades since I read Dune, so my memories of the story are mostly aesthetic. Possibly just Dunecat, even.
I feel like I have no idea how tall Chalamet is, and if I did, maybe I would know how to mentally grapple with this version of Paul. Like, I can look it up, I can see him standing next to others, and it still doesn't stick. And I can't even tell how old he's supposed to be, if there's any heft to him. Boy's like a wraith.
"Dreams make good stories, but everything important happens when we're awake."
The spooky melancholy of the film is so pervasive that, on reflection, it's a little surprising to become so attached to the House Atriedes so quickly. Leto's just a straight-up good dude, y'know? And Jessica, while being creepy as all Bene Gesserit are, is both empathic enough to cry through Paul's pain test and steely enough to compel three dudes into sharp and sudden death.
I'm not sure how they sold Chalamet as a fighter, but in fairness, they fully made his sparring style all lightning stabs, because it's not like the kid could shoulder a dude out of the way in the best of times.
On the other hand, we have Duncan Idaho played by Jason Momoa, so man oh man, we got some quality brawling up in here. And that moment in the ecological station where Duncan stood up again, I legit yelped OH SHIT in my living room.
Meanwhile, Kynes frickin' summoning a sandworm? *fans self*
And again, I don't remember a ton from the books--I'm fairly certain I only read two or three of them--I dig how they handled the spookiness of Paul's visions. Sometimes they set up what-ifs that didn't even come close to fruition, and sometimes they stuttered into reality with a feverish kind of weight.
"This is only the beginning."
A Place Among the Dead, 23 October 2021, via a Peace Over Violence online fundraiser screening
I happened to be listening to a recent interview with Juliet Landau by Buffering the Vampire Slayer and she mentioned she had done this movie. Curious, I clicked over to her website and saw the movie was being screened online in five hours, so I imagine this was meant to be.
The conceit of this film is SUPER meta. It's supposedly a documentary Juliet Landau is making with her partner, Dev, about Hollywood's fascination with vampires. We even get clips of interviews (all, it turns out, scripted) with Anne Rice, Charlaine Harris, Gary Oldman, Robert Patrick, Lance Henriksen, Joss Whedon, Ron Perlman, and a bunch of others. And, like, that's all so interesting that it could have been enough, y'know?
But things take a turn! A serial killer with vampiric tendencies has begun killing again in Santa Barbara, so Juliet folds it in as, I don't know, a bid for a bit more grittiness. Except, well, the serial killer gets hooked on her. And, according to a local bruja, this guy might be an actual vampire.
As she gets dragged more and more into the case, including befriending a victim before she's murdered, you can see her starting to fall apart. Because it starts out as "documentary," there's a shell of artifice around everything, but I'm kind of glad? Because otherwise Juliet Landau's utter commitment to being terrified out of her wits would be nightmarish.
The ending is pure horror movie ambiguity. Creepy as hell.
1 comment:
yeah that "green" monologue in The Green Knight is mmmmm. it's just a beautiful little film
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