After reviewing Zachary Oberzan‘s one-man Rambo adaptation Flooding with Love for the Kid, we thought it would be appropriate to shine a little spotlight on a short of his as well. Although this clip is an abridged version of the complete short film, the pleasantly weird storyline is still intact.
Tag Archives: Black and White
LIST CANDIDATE: THE ADDICTION (1995)
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DIRECTED BY: Abel Ferrara
FEATURING: Lili Taylor, Christopher Walken, Annabella Sciorra, Edie Falco
PLOT: An NYU grad student is bitten on the neck one night, leading her down a rabbit hole of moral and physical degradation.
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: The Addiction strips away the clichés from the vampire formula, replacing bats and theatrics with a personal disintegration reminiscent of Repulsion. What it lacks in weird imagery is more than made up for by its melding of Sartre, heroin addiction, and the supernatural, as well as the eerie atmosphere established by its chiaroscuro photography.
COMMENTS: Throughout his career, Abel Ferrara has made New York-centric films with a grindhouse flavor and an aspiration to artistry. In Ms. 45 (1981), he took on the rape-revenge film; with Bad Lieutenant (1992), he made a Scorsese-esque crime drama. Similarly, The Addiction is a one-of-a-kind vampire movie, marrying urban realism, graphic horror, and several films’ worth of existentialist banter. Although the latter attribute occasionally renders the film inaccessible, it also grants the characters’ neck-biting intrigues an unexpected gravity while making Ferrara’s serious cinematic intentions very clear. This is The Hunger for the smart set.
I Shot Andy Warhol star Lili Taylor plays Kathy, who’s en route to getting her Ph.D. in philosophy when a late-night run-in with a mysterious seductress (Sciorra) leaves a bloody gash on her neck and spurs a metamorphosis from mousy student to loud-mouthed blood junkie. In a series of violent encounters, Kathy’s newfound aggression (coupled with severe photosensitivity) spreads like a virus to her friends, professors, and even the strangers who harass her on the street. Late in the film, she meets an elder vampire named Peina (Walken) who teaches her to control her addiction while quoting William S. Burroughs and Charles Baudelaire; the ending that follows is puzzling but weirdly suggestive, as orgiastic indulgence and Catholic guilt come into play.
The Addiction is shot in high-contrast black and white, bringing expressionistic shadows in conflict with a tendency toward naturalism, especially as Ferrara’s camera prowls the classrooms and hallways of NYU. Taylor gives a stand-out performance as a woman rotting from the inside out, matched by her poetically hard-boiled voiceover. When she enters a university library, for example, she growls, “The smell here’s worse than a charnel house.” These lurid monologues color our perceptions of Ferrara’s New York like the saxophones in Bernard Herrmann’s score for Taxi Driver, drawing us deep into Kathy’s dissipation. And Walken, as usual, is the voice of demented authority, cavorting around Kathy’s exhausted body with his slicked-back hair and daffy energy. He’s only in one scene, but he casts a long shadow across the preceding film.
At times, The Addiction teeters dangerously close to being unforgivably pretentious; it’s packed wall-to-wall with philosophical jargon, grandiose statements about hell and morality, and vampiric metaphors for sex, drugs, and genocide. But the film’s saved by its (and Taylor’s) sheer conviction that something intelligent and well thought-out is being said. Even when the film’s open-ended chronology and its abstract conception of vampirism threaten to make the plot totally incomprehensible, you can hold onto Ferrara’s sincere interest in spiritual redemption and moral culpability. In the end, this thematic integrity, when brought out through Taylor’s uncompromising performance, blasts away any doubts: this is a totally different species of vampire movie.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
![The Addiction (Limited Edition) [4K Ultra HD] [4K UHD]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/4135mdzwlnL._SL500_.jpg)
- Limited Edition
- 4K Ultra HD
SATURDAY SHORT: ALIENATION (2008)
“Everything we know, is everything it is not. And we become foreigners to our own familiarity.”
Chelsea Whitbread’s “Alienation” is heavily influenced by the style and techniques of surrealist Man Ray. Instead of watching, you will spend the next two minutes being watched, and it’s not a pleasant experience.
CAPSULE: HOUR OF THE WOLF [VARGTIMMEN] (1968)
DIRECTED BY: Ingmar Bergman
FEATURING: Max von Sydow, Liv Ullman
PLOT: An artist is haunted by memories of his past. While isolated on an island with his pregnant wife, his demons catch up to him. Madness and delusion creep deeper into his mind as a gang of mysterious island dwellers intervene in the couple’s life. A secret, scandalous affair surfaces, and when supernatural forces intervene, the couple’s relationship and sanity is strained.
![Still from Hour of the Wolf [Vargtimmen] (1968)](https://i0.wp.com/366weirdmovies.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/hour_of_the_wolf.jpg?resize=450%2C278 "Hour of the Wolf")
WHY IT SHOULD’T MAKE THE LIST: This is a tough film to decipher. The ending is certainly weird, but the lead-up to that point is too ponderous and ambiguous. Bergman is a master and his lone foray into the horror genre is an excellent piece of film-making; his artistry in delving into the lower depths of the human psyche is better established in his other well-known masterpieces, however.
COMMENTS: The older I get, the more I appreciate Ingmar Bergman films. There is something about Swedish movies that encapsulates human existence like no other country. Scenes are left dangling on a thread waiting to snap. The slow, or still, images can verge on monotony, but are usually necessary to convey the pathos of the souls here. Sometimes watching scenes slowly transpire is the best way to fully grasp how life can unravel around us. A scene in this film actually plays out for an entire minute with the main character staring at his watch to express how even sixty seconds can feel like an eternity. Time can sometimes lay heavy on a burdened mind. What I’m trying to suggest here is that Bergman is amazing at capturing exactly what it means to be human. We sin and regret, yet we still long for penance and understanding. Even when our existence feels loathsome, it sure is nice to have someone else around to share in our misery. Modern Swedish director Roy Andersson (You, The Living) knows this as well and, like Bergman, his films are wrought with longing stares of sadness. Both Swedes capture these depressing moments and bring them alive with precise balance and well thought out execution. Even dialogue is matter-of-fact. Nothing said in their films seems to be unimportant or drivel; it’s Continue reading CAPSULE: HOUR OF THE WOLF [VARGTIMMEN] (1968)
RECOMMENDED AS WEIRD: SINGAPORE SLING [Singapore sling: O anthropos pou agapise ena ptoma] (1990)
DIRECTED BY: Nikos Nikolaidis
FEATURING: Meredyth Herold, Michele Valley, Panos Thanassoulis
PLOT: An alcoholic detective searches for a lost love, presumably dead, and ends up acaptive of two psychotic women. The women (a mother and daughter) ceaselessly torture the helpless and incapacitated victim. He remains mute as they participate in bizarre sexual practices and flaunt their derangement, sometimes literally in his face.
WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE LIST: Singapore Sling is one of the rare films where practically every frame is teeming with weirdness. The imagery, behavior, and even the strange nuances in the women’s dialogue are often over-the-top and perverse, yet even while the viewer is made to feel uncomfortable, there is an overwhelming desire to see what comes next. Just when you think it couldn’t possibly get any weirder it somehow manages to top itself.
COMMENTS: Singapore Sling is one messed up film. It is a twisted take on the film noirs that filled cinemas in the early part of the 20th century. Specifically, it pays homage to Otto Preminger’s stylish classic Laura (1944). I use the word homage very loosely here, however. The original film’s music theme is used sporadically throughout, the detective’s lost lover is named Laura, and the nutcase daughter has a painted portrait of herself like Gene Tierney’s Laura character. The similarities pretty much end there. Deviance always played a central part in noirs, but not anywhere close to the degree that is on display here. I have to smile thinking about a dolled up 1940’s socialite having a night out at the theater, dressed to the nines in her pearl necklace and pillbox hat, witnessing this vulgarity. “What is she going to do with that kiwi fruit”? Gasp!
Film noir translates to “black film” and Singapore Sling is the purest black possible. Actually, the black and white cinematography is surprisingly lush and almost seems too perfect for a film with this subject matter. The beautiful crispness works to its advantage and the film would not have the same impact if shot in color. The contrast of the blacks and whites are stark and sets the mood perfectly. If I have any quarrel with the movie it is with the decision to Continue reading RECOMMENDED AS WEIRD: SINGAPORE SLING [Singapore sling: O anthropos pou agapise ena ptoma] (1990)