1375 – The Wolf Hour (2019)

timespace coordinates: It’s July 1977, and New York City is awash with escalating violence.

June was once a known counter-culture figure, but that was a decade ago. She now lives alone in her South Bronx apartment, having all but cut herself off from the outside world. It’s the notorious “Summer of Sam” and June only has to look out of her window to see the violence escalating with the brutal summer heat. The city is on a knife’s edge, a pressure-cooker about to explode into the incendiary 1977 New York blackout riots. (imdb)

The Wolf Hour is a 2019 thriller drama film written and directed by Alistair Banks Griffin. It stars Naomi Watts, Emory Cohen, Jennifer Ehle, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Jeremy Bobb and Brennan Brown.

wiki   /   rt

1372 – Society (1989)

timespace coordinates: 1980’s Beverly Hills, California

Society is a 1989 American body horror film directed by Brian Yuzna, and starring Billy Warlock, Devin DeVasquez, Evan Richards, and Ben Meyerson. Its plot follows a Beverly Hills teenager who finds his wealthy parents are part of a gruesome cult for the social elite.

Though the film was completed in 1989, it was not released until 1992. It was Yuzna’s directorial debut and was written by Rick Fry and Woody Keith. Screaming Mad George was responsible for the special effects.

Scottish comic book company Rough Cut Comics acquired the comic book rights to Society in 2002, producing an official sequel. The comic book series returned in 2003 with Society: Party Animal by writer Colin Barr and artists Shelby Robertson (issue 1) and Neill Cameron (issue 2). (wiki)

imdb

1357 – Batman: Gotham by Gaslight (2018)

timespace coordinates: Victorian era Gotham City

Batman: Gotham by Gaslight is a 2018 American animated steampunk superhero film produced by Warner Bros. Animation and distributed by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, featuring an alternate version of the DC Comics character Batman. It is the thirtieth film in the DC Universe Animated Original Movies series. It is directed and produced by Sam Liu and written by James Krieg, loosely based on the one-shot graphic novel of the same name by Brian Augustyn and Mike Mignola. (wiki)

Batman: Gotham by Gaslight, originally published in 1989, is considered to be DC Comics’ first Elseworlds story. “In ELSEWORLDS, heroes are taken from their usual settings and put into strange times and places–some that have existed, and others that can’t, couldn’t or shouldn’t exist.” – DC editorial copy.

Influences   /   imdb

1333 -Nyócker! (2004)

timespace coordinates: 2000’s Józsefváros – Budapest, Hungary

The District! (Hungarian: Nyócker!) is a 2004 Hungarian caricaturistic animated film directed by Áron Gauder. Its original title is a shortened colloquial form of nyolcadik kerület, the eighth district of Budapest, also known as Józsefváros, including an infamous neighbourhood where the film takes place. It is sometimes labelled as the Hungarian South Park.

The animated technique for this movie was rather innovative. The artists took 350 headshot pictures of each actor and used these photos for the expressing emotions and the animation of the heads. The bodies were hand drawn.

The film displays the Hungarian, Roma, Chinese and Arab dwellers and their alliances and conflicts in a humorous way, embedded into a fictive story of a few schoolchildren’s oil-making time-travel and a Romeo and Juliet-type love of a Roma guy towards a white girl. (wiki)

imdb

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Animal Cannibals – Yozsefváros

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1324 – Strange Days (1995)

timespace coordinates: 1999, turn of the century (near-future) Los Angeles (racial war zone / New Year’s Eve party) 

Strange Days is a 1995 American science fiction thriller film directed by Kathryn Bigelow, written by James Cameron and Jay Cocks, and produced by Cameron and Steven-Charles Jaffe. It stars Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis, and Tom Sizemore. Set in the last two days of 1999, the film follows the story of a black marketeer of SQUID discs, recordings that allow a user to experience the recorder’s memories and physical sensations, as he attempts to uncover the truth behind the murder of a prostitute.

Blending science fiction with film noir conventions, Strange Days explores themes such as racism, abuse of power, rape, and voyeurism. Although the story was conceived by Cameron around 1986, Bigelow found inspiration after incidents such as the Lorena Bobbitt trial and the 1992 Los Angeles riots that followed the Rodney King verdict.

Strange Days was a commercial failure and almost derailed Bigelow’s career (…) Nevertheless, the film’s critical standing has improved over the years, with many fans feeling that the film has been overlooked by a casual mass audience and misguided critics.

The scene where the crowd celebrates the turn of the new century at the end of the film was shot at the corner of the 5th and Flower streets, between the Westin Bonaventure Hotel and the Los Angeles Public Library. Over 50 off-duty police officers were hired to control an assembled crowd of 10,000 people, who had to pay $10 in advance to attend the event. The film-makers also hired rave promoters Moss Jacobs and Philip Blaine to produce performances featuring Aphex Twin, Deee-Lite, as well as “all the cyber-techno bands they could garner”.

In 2015, The Washington Post editor Sonny Bunch felt that Strange Days was still relevant, comparing the imagery captured by the SQUID units to that of first-person shooters or cellphone videos on YouTube. He added that events such as Jeriko One’s murder and the subsequent coverup of the crime contribute to activist movements like Black Lives Matter, and that their media documentation amplifies their reception and consequences. (read more: Themes)

wiki   /   imdb

1322 – Good Bye Lenin! (2003)

timespace coordinates: East Berlin, from October 1989 to just after German reunification a year later (Most scenes were shot at the Karl-Marx-Allee in Berlin and around Plattenbauten near Alexanderplatz.)

Good Bye Lenin! is a 2003 German tragicomedy film, directed by Wolfgang Becker. The cast includes Daniel Brühl, Katrin Saß, Chulpan Khamatova, and Maria Simon. The story follows a family in East Germany; the mother (Saß) is dedicated to the socialist cause and falls into a coma in October 1989, shortly before the November revolution. When she awakens eight months later in June 1990, her son (Brühl) attempts to protect her from a fatal shock by concealing the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism.

Ostalgie is a neologism for the nostalgia for a communist past which is a common theme in Good Bye, Lenin! (read more) 

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wiki   /   imdb   /   rottentomatoes   /   Sandmann Lied (sandmännchen – kosmonaut)

1317 – The Death of Dick Long (2019)

timespace coordinates: 2010’s “warped Alabama backwoods narrative”

Y’all wanna get weird?

The Death of Dick Long is a 2019 twisted awkward black comedy–drama film directed and produced by Daniel Scheinert (Swiss Army Man) and written by Billy Chew. The film stars Michael Abbott Jr., Virginia Newcomb, Andre Hyland, Sarah Baker, Jess Weixler, Roy Wood Jr., and Sunita Mani.

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[I]t is probably best seen with zero foreknowledge. Ignatiy Vishnevetsky (AV Club)

You may not like where the movie takes you, but damn if you won’t enjoy the ride. Scott Marks  (San Diego Reader)

You can feel your brain melting away as you watch it, and that’s not always a bad sensation. Bilge Ebiri (New York Magazine/Vulture)

A Deep South crime story that evokes Fargo with different accents Pat Padua
(The DC Line)

It’s one of the year’s best oddities, a small film about hillbilly country folk that certainly won’t be for everyone. Justin Jones (CBR)

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rottentomatoes   /   wiki   /   imdb