spacetime coordinates: 2020’s Second World seaside country of Li Tolqa
Infinity Pool is a 2023 (Canada-Croatia-Hungary coproduction) science fiction horror film written and directed by Brandon Cronenberg, starring Alexander Skarsgård, Mia Goth, and Cleopatra Coleman. The film follows a struggling writer and his wife on vacation who, after an accident, discover the country’s dark culture. (wiki)
spacetime coordinates: spring 1917 – November 1918 the Western Front – Northern France near La Malmaison Champagne the Forest of Compiègne –
All Quiet on the Western Front (German: Im Westen nichts Neues) is a 2022 German epic anti-war film based on the 1929 novel of the same name by Erich Maria Remarque. Directed by Edward Berger, it stars Felix Kammerer, Albrecht Schuch, Daniel Brühl, Sebastian Hülk, Aaron Hilmer, Edin Hasanovic and Devid Striesow. Set in the closing years of World War I, it follows the life of German soldier Paul Bäumer, who, after enlisting in the German Army with his friends, finds himself at risk to the realities of war, shattering the early hopes of becoming heroes. (wiki)
“Both timely and timeless, All Quiet on the Western Front retains the power of its classic source material by focusing on the futility of war.” rottentomatoes
spacetime coordinates: 2022 Brightmoor neighborhood of Detroit, Michigan
Barbarian is a 2022 American horror film written and directed by Zach Cregger. It is produced by Arnon Milchan, Roy Lee, Raphael Margules, and J.D. Lifshitz. The film stars Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård, Justin Long and Matthew Patrick Davis as The Mother. (wiki)
(!!!disturbing content!!!)
“A Danish family visits a Dutch family they met on a holiday. What was supposed to be an idyllic weekend slowly starts unravelling as the Danes try to stay polite in the face of unpleasantness.”
A Feel Bad Danish/Dutch thriller / horror-comedy (?) directed by Christian Tafdrup.
I don’t care who you are. You’re my son. You’ll always be my son. Whoever you are.
Titane (2021) dir Julia Ducournau
“Following a series of unexplained crimes, a father is reunited with the son who has been missing for 10 years. Titane: A metal highly resistant to heat and corrosion, with high tensile strength alloys.” (imdb)
Director: Julia Ducournau
Music by: Jim Williams
Titane will still be probably my favorite movie of both 2021 and 2022. I know I am taking big risks here. Still, I consider J. Ducournau one of the best directors around and one of the few ones that is taking the French extreme cinema (also known as New French Extremism) farther afield. It comes as no surprise that it is produced by NEON. She is inheriting an unflinching, uncompromising Franco-Belge horror cinematography, yet I think she is unique altogether for her forays into what someone in a recent article aptly called “Being a Women is Full of Horror”. There is also a hint of J G Ballard out there (CRASH and Atrocity Exhibition) and Cronenbergian New Flesh.
There is nothing out there even closely comparable to this movie. Got first hint of Ducournau during her previous success – a cannibalism coming of age horror drama RAW (2016), while Titane is the final proof she will always have an ace up her sleeve.
Do not want to give any spoilers so I am going to restrict just to try and detail the way utter brutality is undermined – and imploded by some of the most tender and delicate scenes and enduring relations I have ever encountered on screen. Everything seems or feels impossible or made up – and somehow it appears strangely plausible. To me it brought back an incredible documentary mockumentary – The Imposter from a few years ago in this gender fluid way it approached family relations or inserting into a family or tacitly substituting for a disappeared son and it all makes perfect sense. There’s no judgment no condemnation here.
Fucking a car or getting pregnant with a car baby is after all not a far-fetched thing in a world of Holy Motors. There are scenes of absolute elation – ecstatic dancing and incredible fireman partie full of homoerotic charge. There are scenes that would put most slasher movies to shame. The imagery is super slick – almost videoclip (music video) like and this adds an entirely new quality to just having a plot. Its imagery and iconography seems entirely coherent inspired by a whole world burning – from California’s fiery hell to Australia’s unstoppable bushfires.
It’s hard to ignore that we seem yo be moving backwards – since the decoupling from Russian Oil dependence (politically justified) means another coupling and extractivism madness further afield. Beyond SAVE DIESEL bumper stickers (seen a few of those with my own eyes) or the all-powerful car industry lobby in Germany, there is an incredibly destructive death drive present, animated by a machinistic fetish car crash eroticism (one found in car advertising all over the world) one that has been rarely touched upon since cars became the skeleton in the closet. When we think of 1988 Akira anime we think of atomic energy – yet what is missing is that atomic energy rebranded as green – os supposed to make up for those fossil million year old sources under dictatorial control. Energy vampirism goes hand in hand with a pact with the devil and nobody seems to acknowledge this. A Kardashev level 1 civilization is being grilled, charred away – because what we have is self-combustion dependency, burn-out as a source of constant energy. Peak libido is following the price of oil while the West still cannot believe it depends on Russia or Saudi Arabia for running its motors (including war machines that are supposed to backup those oil reserves). The high-octane heroine Titane – survives a car crash, she’s the first plated cyborg that matches the exhaust pipes of our times. She is no inocent, she’s a killer, transformative and shape-shifting – yet protecting her machinic progeny (not clear if it’s real or just an effect of hallucinations caused by her prosthetics. Reducing with cars literally? No, it’s not a metaphor.
We love and live in a time when car manufacturers race to fake their own emissions and build artificially-sensitive systems that can distinguish btw the simulation and the real world conditions and avoid supervision and regulation and sell more (no matter what costs). Car manufacturers are primary authors of petrofictional cleanliness and carbon neutrality no?
They’re writing the end chapter of this petrofictional 21st c era that seems to want to circumvent any leftover human agency and decide in spite of government regulation, treaties, UN horror reports, climatologists consensus on climate crisis forums. YES (they seem to say) emperatures have to rise and Earth has to be transformed into a dessicated husk. I think one cannot embody or be attuned to these burning reality without such movies as Titane coming out of this bonfire.
spacetime coordinates: 1992 / 2019 Cabrini-Green – Chicago
Candyman is a 1992 American gothic supernatural horror film, written and directed by Bernard Rose and starring Virginia Madsen, Tony Todd, Xander Berkeley, Kasi Lemmons and Vanessa E. Williams. Based on Clive Barker‘s short story “The Forbidden“, the film follows a Chicago graduate student completing a thesis on urban legends and folklore, which leads her to the legend of the “Candyman“, the ghost of an artist and the son of a slave who was murdered in the late 19th century for his relationship with the daughter of a wealthy white man. (wiki)
imdb / rottentomatoes / controversy
Candyman is a 2021 supernatural slasher film directed by Nia DaCosta and written by Jordan Peele, Win Rosenfeld, and DaCosta. The film is a direct sequel to the 1992 film of the same name and the fourth film in the Candyman film series. The film stars Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Colman Domingo, and Kyle Kaminsky. Vanessa Williams, Virginia Madsen, and Tony Todd also reprise their roles from the original film. (wiki)
TimeSpace Warps 