Tag Archives: Period piece

Capsules

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON’T THEY? (1969)

Leave a comment

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

Recommended

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , Michael Sarrazin, ,

PLOT: In Depression-era America, people take part in an exhausting dance contest for a big prize of $1500.

Still from They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969)

COMMENTS: Long before the pop phenomenon “Squid Game” and contemporary reality shows, one New Hollywood flick used contests and challenges as the perfect metaphor for a materialistic and overly competitive society. They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, based on the 1935 Horace McCoy novel, is the product of a specific Hollywood period characterized by creativity and vision. In the late 1960s and 1970s, American mainstream cinema, inspired by the French New Wave and theories regarding auteurist cinema, produced a series of socially-conscious, well-regarded masterpieces. Horses happens to be one of them.

The setting is the poverty-stricken America of the 1930s. The plot revolves around a group of people taking part in a dance competition for couples, which promises a big prize of $1500 for the winners. Jane Fonda plays the cynical, hardened Gloria. By happenstance she meets Robert (Michael Sarrazin) and chooses him as her dance partner for the competition. These two are the protagonists of our tale, and by following them in their struggle we get to know some other couples from the dance floor as well.

Each participant carries their own misfortunes and desperation, and, at least for a while, the competition seems like an escape from their burdens. Not only does it promise rewards, but it conceals everyone’s misery in beautiful costumes and an elegant, festive atmosphere. The question is, is the contest really exploiting them? Their struggle for survival becomes a show for the masses, while the event gradually reveals its face as a deeply humiliating farce. Mental and physical breakdown is part of the program here, and in the end, that failure is what the paying audience wants desperately to consume.

Despite the absence of graphic imagery, within such a competitive and oppressive environment there is a certain dynamic that recalls  the microcosm of ‘s Salo, the 120 Days of Sodom (1975). Contestants try to appeal to the authorities—the event’s producers—through implied sexual favors. At the same time, the relationship between Gloria and Robert hints at a typical Hollywood romance, only to wildly subvert it by revealing its the fakeness and the process behind its construction. The uncommon narrative technique of flash-forwards suggests a tragic finale that only reveals itself fully towards the end.

All in all, this is a solid recommendation for everyone interested in classic cinema and movies with strong elements of social critique. It reveals the exploitative mechanisms at work behind the star system, and the show business, attacking even its own home, Hollywood. And although it takes the form of a tragic fable, it doesn’t lose its realism. It may not be a weird movie, but it is a subversive one for sure.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“A sordid spectacle of hard times, a kind of existentialist allegory of life.”–Variety Staff, Variety (contemporaneous)

(This movie was nominated for review by Brett Warwick, who said “I’m a little surprised that Sydney Pollack’s 1969 fever-dream masterpiece… wasn’t mentioned.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.) 

They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

    New starting from: 66.9 $

    Go to Amazon
    List Candidates

    APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: DOGRA MAGRA (1988)

    1 Comment

    ドグラ・マグラ

    366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

    DIRECTED BY: Toshio Matsumoto

    FEATURING: Yôji Matsuda, Shijaku Katsura, , Eri Misawa

    PLOT: Waking in a sparse cell, a young man tries to piece together the reason for his confinement, assisted—and thwarted—by adversarial psychologists.

    Still from Dogra Magra (1988)

     

    WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: From the get-go, the viewer is in for disorientation and dismay, spiked with foetal philosophizing and sinister slides.

    COMMENTS: Conspiracy, by its nature, is insidious—lurking in the background until the moment of impact. Consider the conspiracies of history: events from over a millennia ago, aging and festering, awaiting their catalyst. The conspiracies of society can blossom into a nefarious constellation of constraints and crucibles. And perhaps most perfidious of all, there is the conspiracy of the mind, wherein the dark elements of the subconscious band together to wreak havoc on waking life.

    So imagine all these conspiracies themselves colluding, and you can glimpse the terrible fate of Ichirô Kure (Yôji Matsuda). He awakens to a blurry yellow light, rising from the floor in troubled wonder, unable to remember his name, his past, or even his face. Enter an older gentleman, going by the name Professor Wakabayashi, who shares with the young man a tale set 1100 years prior. This dark narrative of a mad artist who wishes to capture decomposition, a fixation beginning with the corpse of his murdered bride, is related by one Professor Masaki, hissing out from a phonographic record from beyond the grave.

    Or is Masaki actually dead? Director Toshio Matsumoto depicts his protagonist’s madness with seamless aplomb, but that by no means makes things any clearer. Poisoned flashbacks shudder coherency, as do imagined encounters that appear all too real. Kure is a brilliant student, or was, who had begun groundbreaking research of the mind—we observe him lecturing to a gallery peopled by asylum inmates, with none other than Professor Masaki joining the growing chaos chanting an “Ahodara Sutra” (or “Fool’s Prayer”) as he traipses merrily through the classroom. Or maybe Kure is just lecturing to himself in his cell. As with the cryptic prenatal visions, little is clear aside from these facts: Kure’s mother was killed; Kure’s fiancée was killed; and the two professors observing the fellow gravely overstepped their ethical bounds.

    Intriguingly for a film engrossed by narrative slight-of-hand and the malleability of memory, the truth can be found in the film within-the-film. Professor Masaki records the wards of his care, all undergoing a “freedom” regiment akin to the inmates chronicled in Poe’s “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether.” A chance encounter with a janitor leads to a projector in an abandoned storage room, its information triggering a cyclonic hallucination. The elements swirl and bombard the pitiable Ichirô Kure, as the three agents of conspiracy crash down together on his consciousness.

    He awakens to a blurry yellow light.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “…[A] puzzling work that blends reality with fantasy. I expected a horror movie of sorts. While that classification does kind of work, labelling it as such doesn’t do the film any favors. This is one of those movies that defies genre classification.” — Bret Oswald, Irish Film Critic

    Dogra Magra

    Dogra Magra

    • A man wakes in an asylum with no memory. Dr Wakabayashi helps him to recall his past in which he killed his bride on their wedding day

    List Price : 29.95 $

    Offer: 24.91 $

    Go to Amazon
    Capsules

    CAPSULE: THE CARPENTER’S SON (2025)

    3 Comments

    366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

    Beware

    DIRECTED BY: Lotfy Nathan

    FEATURING: Noah Jupe, , FKA Twigs, Isla Johnson

    PLOT: A Jewish teenage boy, the son of a carpenter, is tempted by a Stranger to use his innate powers for evil.

    Still from The Carpenter's Son (2025)
    Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

    COMMENTS: Mary and Jesus speak like they’re ordering high tea at the Goring hotel, Joseph raps in a California accent, the locals talk like Greeks pretending they’re Egyptians, and I swear one esteemed rabbi is Scottish. Inconsistent accents are not always a death knell for historical movies. There are numerous classics where the cast eschews their natural tongues to speak English (e.g. Schindler’s List),  others where one or two characters can be forgiven for mangling a difficult accent (e.g. Braveheart), and even a few where they purposefully ignore proper dialects (e.g., The Death of Stalin). But those are movies whose greatness overcomes their anachronisms; when your movie isn’t great, or anywhere close to it, that kind of lack of attention to detail can become emblematic of what’s wrong with the work.

    The Carpenter’s Son is a historical horror drama set during Jesus’ teenage years, an era the Gospels skipped over as too boring. It revolves as much, if not more, around Nicolas Cage’s carpenter than it does his moody teen son. Joseph (he’s never named Joseph in the film, despite the character being firmly public domain by now) narrates and struggles with doubts over whether his son is who his wife says he is, and, once it appears that the boy has magical powers, whether he’s a force for good or evil. In the meantime, he lays down strict rules for his stepson’s own good. No one is to know who they are while the trio is hiding out (for pseudo-Biblical reasons) in Egypt. Mary (i.e. “the mother”) does little of anything. “Jesus” (credited as “the boy”) acts like a typical teenager, basically a good egg, but taken to occasional impertinence and rebelliousness, and even a bit of peeping at his bathing neighbor. Oh, and he accidentally heals lepers when a playmate shoves him into them, so there’s that. And he has a real case to scream “you’re not my real Father!” at Nicolas Cage, but he mostly avoids that temptation. Plus, he fights demons!

    But despite all this meaty material, the script provides no suspense or tension. Jesus’ temptation by Lucifer was already covered more profoundly and succinctly in both the Canonical Gospels and in a far greater film; this story is therefore not only predictable, but redundant. Satan’s initial attempts at seduction are pretty lame: she mostly tempts Jesus to use his powers for good, then gives him a peek at eternal damnation, which pretty much turns him off to the whole Universal Evil thing. The plan of acting kind of like a dick to get the messiah to abandon the world’s salvation doesn’t work out, but Satan will learn from this failure and give it a better shot in 15 years.

    Cage monotones his way through his monologues, briefly erupting into periodic patented “Cage rage” rants to earn his paycheck before slipping back into a doze. As meek Mary, out-of-her-depths pop star FKA Twigs follows her screen hubby’s lead, looking lost most of the time while conserving her emotion for the one or two chances she gets to raise her voice. The two younger actors, Jupe and Johnson, fare better, but the script gives them so little to work with that they make only a slight impression. There are a few nifty if frustratingly brief visions of Hell and stuff near the end—if you can stay awake that long, and can make them out through the underlit and murky lensing.

    The Carpenter’s Son was “inspired by” the apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas. That narrative was a fascinating imagination of Jesus’ childhood, where the future savior acts like a bit of a brat, killing classmates for slights (don’t freak out, he later resurrects them) and performing odd rites like creating clay birds and bringing them to life. That script would make for a potentially great, wild movie. But The Carpenter’s Son is too reverential and chickens out from making that gonzo adaptation; what should be a bold provocation is instead an assemble-as-directed horror film, with a depressingly literal and violent good vs. evil showdown and only a surface-level examination of theology or the burden of messiahdom. Christians wary of a blasphemous Jesus horror film need not fear this mediocrity; worshipers at the altar of cinema, on the other hand, may call it sacrilege. Frankly, I’d rather get a splinter than watch The Carpenter’s Son again.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “Nicolas Cage is very much in the experimental independent film stage of his career and his latest movie is as wild as ever… Contorting demons, snakes pulled out of the mouths of the crucified and circles of Hell are just some of the disturbing imagery in this bizarre fable.”–George Simpson, Daily Express (contemporaneous)

    (This movie was nominated for review by “Sal U. Lloyd,” who said it was “Theologically unorthodox, with influences from Begotten and the African flashbacks in Boorman’s Exorcist Ii: The Heretic.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

    Capsules

    CAPSULE: FINALLY DAWN (2023)

    Leave a comment

    Finalmente l’alba

    366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

    Recommended

    DIRECTED BY: Saverio Costanzo

    FEATURING: Rebecca Antonaci, Lily James, Joe Keery, Willem Dafoe

    PLOT: After losing track of her sister during a casting call in 1950s Rome, Mimosa ends up spending a long night with a Hollywood actress and her hangers-on.

    Still from Finally Dawn (2023)

    COMMENTS: Mimosa’s mother appreciated the actors’ performance in The Sacrifice—the black and white film which opens Finally Dawn—but is annoyed that all the movies these days obsess over war tragedies. Mimosa’s striking sister thought the film lovely; though perhaps not quite so lovely as a studio swain finds the sister. And Mimosa herself? She loves movies, and probably doesn’t love the quiet police official she’s engaged to. She joins her sister at Cinecittà the following day for an extras casting call for a new sword and sandal epic; though not selected (Mimosa’s modesty does her no favors with the film crew), she accidentally meets Josephine Esperanto, a star she greatly admires. When she’s hand-picked by the leading lady for a small cameo, so begins Mimosa’s long night of drinks, drugs, and rumors of a tiger escaped in the Eternal City.

    Finally Dawn is slick, with the atmosphere of a period-period-epic. But the general malaise of the grand actors confounds Mimosa, and her lack of fluency in English does her no favors. (This is allayed when an affable bilingual American gallery owner played by a quietly charming Willem Dafoe smooths over the proceedings.) She’s brought to a fine restaurant, whisked to an opulent palazzo party, and otherwise has luxury and intrigue thrust upon her as her various hosts curry favor with this quiet Roman girl who has escaped the jadedness which weighs them down.

    Saverio Costanzo’s film unwraps with an easy-awkward charm: easy on the eyes, as these are the beautiful people; awkwardness emerging from the unkindness found amongst those beautiful people, foisted upon an everywoman who is torn between wonderment, confusion, and a desire to just get home. Even with their flaws, the characters are all likable, to one degree or another—although Josephine Esperanto’s shenanigans with her human toy make for at least one uneasy scene—and Rebecca Antonaci’s turn as Mimosa evolves from endearing deer-in-headlights into compelling mistress of her fate. Finally Dawn concludes with a low growl, as Mimosa’s maturation arc lands with a soft, barefoot walk alongside a soft, toothful companion.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “…chronicles the dreamlike quality of a night that eventually descends into a nightmare… a surreal vision of coming-in-age via cinema, and James fully sells the movie star mayhem at its center. But it can’t overcome its meandering script and hollow depiction of the era.”–Maureen Lee Lenker, Entertainment Weekly (contemporaneous)

    Capsules

    CAPSULE: HARVEST (2024)

    Leave a comment

    366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

    DIRECTED BY:

    FEATURING: , , Arinzé Kene, Frank Dillane,  Rosy McEwen, Thalissa Teixeira, Neil Leiper

    PLOT: Life in a Scottish farming village changes dramatically with the arrival of a new lord.

    Still from Harvest (2024)

    COMMENTS: In a nameless village in an uncertain time—sometime after the arrival of tobacco, but before the Industrial Revolution has reached rural Scotland—Walter (Caleb Landry Jones) eats bark and sticks his tongue into a knothole on an oak tree. You can’t get much more at one with the land than that.

    The village Walter lives in has no name. That changes when a chart-maker comes to map out the area. The natives see cartography as a threat; naming things is the first step to owning them, and the village operates (although somewhat hypocritically) on the principle of communal ownership of the land. Not that these people are noble savages, exactly; they’re as cruel, superstitious, and racist as they are poor. Walter wasn’t born there, but married a native and is now a widower; he is a close confidant of the beneficent landowner Master Kent, also not native born. He is a semi-outsider, caught between worlds, not fully accepted by the villagers but lacking another place to call home. His liminal status turns him into an observer. He befriends the cartographer, but also scolds him for “flattening” the land by mapping it. Walter is also spineless, sensing danger but as unable to stop progress from marching into the literal one-horse town as is the weak-willed Mater Kent. A fire in the Master’s stable foretells evil to come. Then, three outsiders are pilloried—for the crime of being outsiders. Walter is the only one who sympathizes with the trio,  but he is unable to muster the strength or courage to challenge any decision of the powers that be.

    Harvest is beautifully shot (sometimes reminiscent of the “harvest” subgenre of European painting) and impressively scored (one peasant threshing song is synced to the rhythm of swinging scythes). But the storytelling is confusing, the dialogue can be stiff, and the feckless protagonists supply little dramatic momentum as the story limps to its inevitable conclusion. The “hallucinatory” element suggested in Harvest‘s promotional materials is vastly oversold; in truth, the strangeness (mostly coming from the slightly alien behavior of the village’s peasants) never rises beyond the occasionally odd. Nor is the movie, as a few have claimed, folk horror (there’s plenty of folk, including some authentic-sounding bagpipe tunes, but no real horror). With this project, director/co-scripter distances herself from her association with the “Greek Weird Wave,” delivering an on-the-nose exploration of the ruthlessness with which capitalism replaced agrarian societies. Weirdophiles may safely skip this one; arthouse fans with a taste for historical, class-conscious narratives might find it worthwhile.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    ” Smatterings of the earthy, the occult, the hallucinatory and the neo-realist never coalesce into a pacy narrative…”–Carmen Paddock, The Skinny (contemporaneous)