Tag Archives: Anthology

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: GOODBYE, 20TH CENTURY! (1998)

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Zbogum na dvaesettiot vek!

DIRECTED BY: Darko Mitrevski, Aleksandar Popovski

FEATURING: Lazar Ristovski, Nikola Ristanovski, Vlado Jovanovski, Toni Mihajlovski, Petar Temelkovski, Sofija Kunovska

PLOT: In a fractured timeline, we encounter a man in a post-apocalyptic world in search of a hidden place where the fate of everyone is foretold on a wall, a turn-of-the-century brother and sister who marry for love over the objections of their family, and a man in a Santa Claus suit on the eve of the new millennium who stumbles into a strange funeral.

Still from Goodbye, 20th Century! (1999)

COMMENTS: You can instinctively know that a thing exists and yet be completely unaware of it until you’re face-to-face with it. Consider “toothpaste tube designer” or “menu photographer.” Their existence is completely logical, yet you’ve never had to consider their existence. So it goes with the surprising subject of today’s review: the cinema of Macedonia. Of course there would be a history, given its place in the Ottoman Empire at the dawn of film, decades as part of Yugoslavia, and running all the way through a naming spat with Greece. It makes perfect sense that there would be such a thing, but, I mean, who knew?

First-time directors Mitrevski and Popovski are clearly cinema aficionados. The first segment, a typical violent futuristic wasteland, immediately conjures up thoughts of Mad Max. The closer is a harsh ian urban nightmare with hints of esque style. There are more familiar references to be found, but the movie I think they were most eager to ape is Pulp Fiction. With its time-jumping thruline and a flashback vignette knotting the two halves together, Goodbye, 20th Century! feels like an attempt to do with a Balkan post-war flair.

We open in the far-off world of 2019, which follows the journey of Kuzman, a post-apocalyptic pariah who seemingly cannot die. His encounters with a band of Road Warrior-style toughs features some intriguing imagery, most notably a pair of designated wailers who carry masks with them to multiply the mourning. Later, after an intended execution fails to do the trick, he has an intriguing encounter with a prophet who tells him that he must defeat a green-haired jokester/maniac (think of a certain archfoe of a particular dark knight) in order to reach a kind of memorial wall. That effort, combined with a sexual assignation with a tattooed lady who is revealed to be Kuzman’s sister, brings him the release from life that he seeks. It’s not exactly logical, but it makes for a tidy tale. In fact, the most surprising thing about it is that it ends, with half-a-movie still to go.

The other major story takes us back in time 20 years, specifically to the last night of the century, when a man dressed as Santa Claus endures the apathy of the public (and the insults of a young Kuzman in particular) before hoping to retire to his apartment for the evening. Instead of his bed, he walks into a surreal funeral taking place in a completely white room, attended by stern figures in black. A dark farce ensues, including a flatulent old woman, a purloined toupee, and a pair of hipsters who completely misread the room by bringing champagne and a boombox and spiking the koliva. Meanwhile, the very same prophet who advised Kuzman on how to die in 2019 is here to help prepare the body in 1999. It’s all very wacky and deliberately unfunny, and since we know from the earlier tale that the apocalypse is at hand and it’s just a matter of time before the funeral itself descends into homicidal mayhem. (Appropriately, the madness is scored by Sid Vicious’ version of “My Way.”)  Naturally, this culminates with the creation of that very same memorial wall, meaning we’ve come full circle.

It all feels very metaphorical, and probably much more meaningful if you had lived through the miseries of Macedonia in the last decade of the millennium. I suspect the key to understanding Goodbye, 20th Century! lies within the interstitial vignette that connects the two halves. Presented as a historic look at the first wedding ever captured on film in Macedonia (the prophet appears here as the cinematographer, making him amusingly but pointlessly immortal), it’s actually the tragically brief tale of a brother and sister whose incestuous love ends promptly with the groom’s immediate murder. “If this is how the 20th century started,” the narrator flatly observes, “who can tell how it will end?” Violence is endemic, the movie says, even genetic, and considering how the former Yugoslav republics were mired in war in the years following the breakup, such a dismal outlook seems understandable. Everyone dies. Hope is a fool’s errand.

And yet.

Seven years after the dissolution of Yugoslavia and four years after the first Macedonian film to earn an Academy Award nomination, the country submitted this strange quasi-anthology as its attempt to repeat the achievement. It did not get the honor, but instead has eked out an afterlife thanks to its unusual structure and snarky attitude. (Consider that the film’s title is revealed after a trip through a toilet.) The movie has survived, the renamed North Macedonia has survived (with its very own cinematic tradition), and indeed all of us continue to muddle our way through a seemingly unending social nightmare. Maybe the apocalypse isn’t inevitable. It’s a nice thought to have as we embark upon a new year that feels like it could be more grim that the last. So raise a glass. Goodbye, 2024. Maybe the future won’t be the end of everything. Maybe instead of destroying the planet and marrying our sister, this time we’ll get it right.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Utterly bizarre, this first feature by Macedonian multimedia bad boys Aleksandar Popovski and Darko Mitrevski weds “Mad Max”–style grunge futurism, silly-mythic solemnity and anarchic humor to ends that make no sense whatsoever — proudly so, one suspects.” – Dennis Harvey, Variety (contemporaneous)

(This movie was nominated for review by Dreamer. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)     

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: KINDS OF KINDNESS (2024)

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Recommended

DIRECTED BY: Yorgos Lanthimos

FEATURING: , Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, , Hong Chau, Mamoudou Athie

PLOT: A triptych of twisted modern fables from Yorgos Lanthimos: a boss dictates every aspect of his employee’s life; after his missing wife returns, a police officer suspects that she’s been replaced by a close copy; two cult members search for their messiah.

Still from Kinds of Kindness (2024)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: It’s narrative unpredictability from Hollywood’s foremost Greek surrealist, with trice the weirdness. John McEnroe’s broken racket will be gifted (and stolen), Emma Stone will cry “lick me again!” (not what you think), and dogs will (mostly) have a blast on the beach.

COMMENTS: With Kinds of Kindness, Yorgos Lanthimos seems intent on jettisoning any casual fans who might have come on board with Poor Things. Reuniting Lanthimos with screenwriting collaborator Efthimis Filippou, and shot several months after the hit fantasy with much of the same cast, Kindness was knocked out in a spiffy three weeks. Featuring murder, abortion, cannibalism, roofies, canine supremacy, and other kinds of bad behavior, the kindness-free Kindness works as a bitter palette cleanser for the frothy and sweet (by Lanthimos standards) Poor Things.

The three tales are linked by one “R.M.F.,” a peripheral character whose lends his name to all three titles. The stories range in tone from absurdist to magical realist, with digressions into genuine surrealism, but their dim view of core human behavior brings everything together. This time, Lanthimos steers away from stylistic excesses—no affectless acting, no ultra-wide lenses, no baroque sets—and lets the stories’ bizarre high concepts carry the weight. The director takes advantage of everyman Plemmons, a new addition to what is fast becoming a regular troupe, putting him front and center in the first two stories. In “The Death of R.M.F.” Plemmons is an exceptionally needy employee hiding behind a mustache, while “R.M.F. Is Flying” sees his cop descend into a paranoia that slowly transforms him into the coldest-hearted of bastards. Stone plays a key roles, especially in “Flying”—particularly her monologue about what happened to her when she was stranded on a deserted island, which, with its followup in the midpoint credits, lands as Kindness‘ most out-there moment—but really takes the spotlight for the finale, “R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich.” There she plays the more obsessive of two traveling cult members on the messiah candidate-vetting circuit, who also has a troubled relationship with the child and husband she left behind to pursue this strange vocation. She drives a purple muscle car like a maniac and gets a Lanthimos-trademark weirdo dance scene. Dafoe and Qualley (and to a lesser extent, Chau and Athie) add fine support as they drift through the trilogy of tales, possessing the bodies of various characters as needed.

If there is a complaint, it’s that, while each story stands on its own at about 45 minutes, watching them back-to-back-to-back can be a bit trying. There’s little relief from the dour atmosphere. (It would work brilliantly as a three-episode miniseries.) But that’s a mighty small disclaimer, given the uncommon bounty here: literate absurdism delivered by a top-notch, thoroughly dedicated cast and crew.

There is a common theme running through the each of these parables: unthinking obedience, the willingness of people to commit any atrocity in exchange for a sense of belonging. This makes it a sly political allegory for our times. Kinds of Kindness could be set in any era, but it speaks to just how horrible it is to be alive in 2024.

Kinds Of Kindness - Blu-ray + Digital
  • Kinds of Kindness is a triptych fable following a man without choice who tries to take control of his own life, a policeman who is alarmed that his wife who was missing-at-sea has returned and seems a different person, and a woman determined to find a specific someone with a special ability who is destined to become a prodigious spiritual leader.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Director Yorgos Lanthimos trips over himself reconnecting with his inner freak in ‘Kinds of Kindness,’ a frustrating triptych that works hard to reconfirm his weirdo cred after he experienced a pair of mainstream successes.”–Adam Graham, The Detroit News (contemporaneous)

366 UNDERGROUND: THE OTHER DIMENSION (1992)

L’altra dimensione

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DIRECTED BY: Fabio Salerno

FEATURING: Francesco Rinaldi, Maddalena Vadacca; Luigi Sgroi, Nadia Rebeccato, Piero Belloto; Marco Monzani, Giorgia Chezzi

PLOT: In this horror anthology, a man plots abduction of the woman who’s left him, another plots possession of a woman who’s leaving him, and a third plots incorporation of a woman who’s no longer living.

COMMENTS: Three short films await us, projected in a dingy, dark room. Dust-covered sound equipment, cobwebbed film reels, and a menacing tinge of green fill the narrow screen, as an unseen entity inquires, “How many of you have found yourself the subject of incredible stories?” The Other Dimension spools out like miniature theater event: two shorts preceding a near-feature.

Salerno kicks off with “Delirium”, a fun variant of the “Bluebeard” folktale. Simply constructed, the segment features clever lighting, with the unearthly sparkles of the protagonist’s whiskey and glass capturing the titular condition, and giallo greens exuding organic menace. The film’s frame is put to compelling use as our angular stalker’s and victim’s fates collide. Most troublingly, Salerno manages an abstract, and impressively brief visual metaphor for rape, whose beauty left me quite unnerved. Closing with a shot of three heads by a bottle of Pepsi, Salerno wraps up the action and we are quickly brought to the squabbling exes of “Mortal Instinct.” The title is a bit heavy-handed, but the second short (the weakest of the three) goes by quickly enough. But not before it makes some remarks on machismo by way of Black Magic—with a bodily destruction sequence that may not appear realistic, but somehow manages to be ickily convincing nevertheless.

The main course of The Other Dimension, “Eros e Thanatos (Love & Death)”, shows off Salerno’s talents about as far as his means could allow. Some fifty minutes in length, its story of decayed love rotting into aberrant obsession left me, against considerable odds, wishing for a happy ending to fall upon the quiet protagonist. Judicious montage, narration, and, once again, a keen eye for lighting simultaneously showed how cleverly this was made—and how inexpensively. The lead actor, Marco Monzani, never plays a note wrong, whether he’s awkwardly paying the cabbie to get his ex-girlfriend moving on her way, or taking her by the hand as she emerges from the grave. “Eros e Thanatos” lies somewhere between Angst and After Hours, and its action, though scant, floats by on gusts of a sickly-sweet breeze.

Stumbling into this experience with no information beyond “low budget”, “Italian”, “horror”, and the IMDb filmmaker overview’s sole blurb, “Died 1993 · Milan, Italy (suicide)”, I really didn’t know what to expect from this, but it was certainly not that The Other Dimensions would have such impressive flashes of on-screen poetry. To the best of my knowledge, Fabio Salerno is a name known only to a small subsection of horror buffs. This final offering, completed not long before his death at the age of thirty-one, clearly shows that the world of cinema lost a promising voice far too soon.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“[I]t’s a heck of a wild ride if you love scrappy homemade horror.” — Nathaniel Thompson, Mondo Digital (Blu-ray)

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: SHE IS CONANN (2023)

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Recommended

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , , Claire Duburcq, Christa Théret, Sandra Parfait, , Nathalie Richard,

PLOT: Waking in the afterlife, Conann the barbarian recalls various stages of her life, and her relationship with the dog-faced demon who guides her destiny.

Still from She Is Conann (2023)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: She Is Conann lives up to its high weird premise—six gender-flipped incarnations of pulp hero Conan(n) the Barbarian—and then some. At this point, it seems likely that anything Mandico sets his hand to will merit candidacy.

COMMENTS: Bertand Mandico loves women. He cast women in all the male roles for The Wild Boys, then set his sophomore feature After Blue on an all-female planet, and now creates a distaff version of Robert E. Howard’s pulp warrior. There are a tiny number roles in Conann; the only major one is played by a female (and at least one female character is played by a male). Mandico also could be accused of having (or exploiting) a lesbian fetish, although it seems the main reason his women have sex with other women is because there aren’t many men around. But there isn’t much sex in Conann (although there is some graphic kissing). Mandico’s casting of actresses in typically male roles has become his auteurial signature, analogous to the non-acting that populated ‘ early movies. The feminine skew is simply part of his worldview.

Conann is essentially an anthology film, a fragmented hero’s journey, with each individual incarnation of the barbarian capable of standing alone: most kill the previous decade’s Conann, directly or indirectly, before embarking on their own story. The first two Conanns inhabit what is basically a high fantasy world, though one where the all-female barbarian tribes wear modified gorilla costumes with wicked nipple hooks. But the story expands after that, seeing Conann take a job as a contemporary stuntwoman, then a fascist officer, and then finally as a post-apocalyptic patroness of the arts. Conann’s character changes—you could argue she becomes increasingly barbaric—but what really ties everything together is Elina Löwensohn‘s demonic Rainier, who strides through the film nudging an obscure prophecy along, frequently taking flash photographs of Conann’s exploits for posterity. Her dog mask is surprisingly effective, leaving room for her eyes to hint at some sinister intelligence, but muzzling her overall expressiveness so that he/she remains mysterious.

The movie plays out entirely on indoor theatrical sets—mist-shrouded barbarian wildernesses, a sleazy urban snake pit where a wall of Conann’s apartment hangs in the air unfinished, a tin-foil-lined Hell. Shot mostly in black and white, it occasionally shifts to soft, faded color. There is an unusual amount of squirm-inducing (though black and white) gore, and more than one example of the ultimate act of barbarity, cannibalism. These elements distance the film from the tasteful art-house circuit, while the experimental plot and portentous dialogue (“You’ve killed Europe! You can’t do that!”) alienates the average genre audience member. In his “incoherent” manner, Mandico discombobulates the viewer between masculine and feminine, monochrome and color, melodrama and farce, art and trash. For most, his technique is off-putting; for us, it’s invigorating,

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The lo-fi production design is often wondrous, the midnight-movie vibe is fetching, but the film is ultimately probably too much of a good/weird thing to sustain its running time — although, for the French writer-director’s fans, such excess is the key to his success.”–Tim Grierson, Screen Daily (festival screening)

She Is Conann
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CAPSULE: PRAGUE NIGHTS (1969)

Pražské noci

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DIRECTED BY: Miloš Makovec, ,

FEATURING:, Milena Dvorská, , Lucie Novotná, Teresa Tuszyńska, Josef Somr

PLOT: An executive in Prague on business goes trolling for female companionship, which he finds in a mysterious woman who regales him with three macabre tales through the night, and who seems to desperately want something from him before sunrise…

Sill from Prague Nights (1969)

COMMENTS: The anthology or portmanteau film has been a staple of both foreign and domestic horror filmmaking.  Kwaidan and Spirits of the Dead come readily to mind, but there are more examples than you’d think, especially in the 1960s. Prague Nights did not do well when released in Czechoslovakia, and didn’t get much exposure internationally, so it’s not well known; a bit surprising, considering the pedigree of those involved: Jiří Brdečka (acclaimed director of animation and co-writer of Invention for Destruction, Baron Prásil, The Cassandra Cat,  Lemonade Joe, and The Mysterious Castle in the Carpathians), Evald Schorm (known more at the time as a documentarian), and Miloš Makovec. Brdečka originated the project, although he only directed one segment, “The Last Golem”; Schorm handled “Bread Slippers,” and Makovec helmed the last story, “The Poisoned Poisoner,” as well as the framing episode “Fabricus and Zuzana.” Shot during the Prague Spring of 1968, the film has barely a whiff of the sort of political commentary/allegory that one might expect. This is light entertainment, and perhaps not as horrific as one might expect from the material—there aren’t any big scares here, although you might get some minor frissons during “Golem” and “Slippers.” If there’s any examination of politics, it’s sexual politics.

“The Last Golem” takes the legend of The Golem of Prague as its basis, featuring  Rabbi Loew as a main character. The Emperor and Rabbi Loew bash heads; the Emperor wants Loew to resurrect the Golem, and Loew refuses. Seeing an opportunity, Rabbi Naftali Ben Chaim (Jan Klusák, the actor and composer who provides the music for “Bread Slippers,” but who may be best known as a questionable clergyman in Valerie and Her Week of Wonders) will do the Emperor’s bidding, creating another Golem despite being distracted by a mute servant girl (Lucie Novotná) who arouses his lust.

“Bread Slippers” is a variation on The Red Shoes merged with “Faust.” A Countess (Teresa Tuszyńska) is self-centered, manipulative and very cozy with her maid. She’s stringing along her latest suitor, and makes a plan to attend a costume ball in slippers made from bread (after learning that amongst the poor, bread is worth its weight in gold). She arrives at the function, but unexpected guests also show up…

“The Poisoned Poisoner” is the shortest of the tales, with no spoken dialogue. It’s accompanied by songs that narrate the action. In a medieval setting, an innkeeping couple help make ends meet by poisoning wealthy suitors and looting their corpses, until the proprietress falls for a resourceful suitor—much to the chagrin of her partner.

The perfidy of woman is a running theme, set up in the framing “Fabricus and Zuzana.” Zuzana consistently warns Fabricus with lines such as, “Every beautiful woman is dangerous—but me even more than most.” “Be careful or you’ll regret it. What did he regret? He trusted a woman.” Notably, this “perfidy” always centers around true love, as the main characters in all the segments meet their fates as a result of romance revealing itself to be false. That, however, might just be a surface reading. As with most anthologies of this type, they’re essentially morality tales, and the downfall of the characters originates in betrayal, leading to a trip to Hell… literally, in this case.

Prague Nights ends up as a stylish, literate, and lighter version of the horror anthologies that studios like Amicus would begin to churn out in the near future.

HOME VIDEO INFO: In 2023 Deaf Crocodile released a Region A Blu-ray of a restoration of Prague Nights for its first U.S. release. Included is an audio commentary with Czech film expert/critic Irena Kovarova and critic/screenwriter Tereza Brdečková, the daughter of Jiří Brdečka. Brdečková also contributes an essay on the making of the film in the booklet and an interview on her father’s career. The set includes two of Brdečka’s animated shorts, “Pomsta” (“Revenge”) (1968, 14 min.), and “Jsouc na řece mlynář jeden” (“There Was A Miller On A River”) (1971, 11 min.).

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“There’s enough sinister material here for this to squeak by into the horror genre, though dark magical realism is probably a better way to approach the project as it also has a dreamy, whimsical attitude capped off by a wild flourish at the end.”–Nathaniel Thompson, Mondo Digital (Blu-ray)

(This movie was nominated for review by MST68, who described it as having a “wonderfully creepy atmosphere.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)