Comments on: Movies You May Have Missed: 7/22/08

By: Matthew

Matthew — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 02:44:30 +0000

I can see why you’re not familar with Rillonia – it’s the the homeland of Teddy. Through most of the series action takes place in Grundo. It may be odd that I like and know about Teddy Ruxpin – but I’m an 80’s child.

By: Sam Juliano

Sam Juliano — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:38:43 +0000

DVD STREET DATES JUST ANNOUNCED:

Paranoid Park October 7
Speed Racer September 16

and Luis Bunuel’s Nazarin in September on Lionsgate–first time on Region 1

By: Sam Juliano

Sam Juliano — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:31:06 +0000

If you consider EMPIRE among the three or four best of 1987, well then that’s fair enough.

Harvey, I clicked on your name, but other reviews appeared, not the one for THE LAST WINTER, oddly.

By: Jeff McM

Jeff McM — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 07:09:46 +0000

I haven’t seen Habit, doesn’t it star Fessenden himself in the lead?

Harvey, in my opinion, a Ghost Moose doesn’t need explaining. It abides.

I wouldn’t call Empire of the Sun my favorite film of 1987, but I would call it one of the three or four best, for sure, definitely an underrated Spielberg title.

By: Craig Kennedy

Craig Kennedy — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 02:44:39 +0000

Hahaha…that’s exactly where I checked out Harvey, but I swear up to that point he was on to somehting. And the ending was kind of great…if it had been attached to a completely different movie.

By: Harvey

Harvey — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 01:38:18 +0000

“The Last Winter” ? Really?

Can you explain the Ghost Moose to me? Or even what the cause of all the trouble was? Click my name if you want to read my mean review. I hated it.

But Fessenden’s first movie — “Habit” — is well worth seeing, a low-key thriller about a NYC drunk who’s set upon by a woman who may or may not be a vampire. It’s moody, makes great use of its limited budget and may be the only movie I can think of that features a leading man who’s missing one of his front teeth all through the film.

By: Sam Juliano

Sam Juliano — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 23:48:46 +0000

Yes it is thank you my friend.

By: Alexander Coleman

Alexander Coleman — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 23:45:15 +0000

Those are emotionally rich films, Sam. Babette’s Feast from that year hit me pretty hard, and I only recently saw it, this past Easter, actually.

Empire of the Sun gains even more emotional weight if you see it in a theatre as I did about fifteen months ago. Just overpowering.

I’m on my way out, but it’s a good discussion…

By: Alexander Coleman

Alexander Coleman — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 23:42:24 +0000

I certainly see what you’re saying, Sam; I wasn’t really taking a position with regards to The Last Winter as I sort of see both sides, but like you say, it’s next to impossible to disregard the director’s intent in that case.

By: Sam Juliano

Sam Juliano — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 23:38:52 +0000

Craig, it is the latter, but there is admittedly a disclaimer with that position. CLOVERFIELD was a very bad film and it was derivative, so there was no redemption. While there were elements in THE THING that were derivative, it also bore some distinct originality.

Yes, Craig indeed I have seen that Lewton doc and it is quite good!!!!

Alexander: To expound further on that wonderful continuing thread at Awards Daily, I would like to say that the major reason I loved EMPIRE OF THE SUN so much, and like you considered it the best film of 1987 (Dorothy Porker chimed in too and said she loved it) is because I was moved on an emotional level that I had not been to that point. And there is nothing in the movies as great as the exhiliarating emotional high.
There were TWO other films that year that moved me deeply as well, in fact nearly as much, and both are truly great films:
Claude Berri’s JEAN DE FLORETTE
John Boorman’s HOPE AND GLORY

I almost tear just thinking of them.

By: Craig Kennedy

Craig Kennedy — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 23:17:49 +0000

John Carpenter’s The Thing in fact was derivative of other movies, Alien for example, yet I love it.

Of course, that film plays the Kurt Russell card which is almost an automatic for me (as long as film doesn’t also play the Goldie Hawn card).

By: Craig Kennedy

Craig Kennedy — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 23:16:23 +0000

Sam, have you seen Val Lewton: A Man in the Shadows? I tried to catch it at AFI last year but the timing was alwasy off. I heard it was pretty good though.

Jeff, those are good examples because I disliked Cloverfield and loved Death Proof.

Sam are you saying you didn’t find Cloverfield derivative, or are you saying you would not have enjoyed it no matter what because it was derivative?

If it’s the latter, I see what you’re saying, but that’s what I was getting at earlier. Sometimes a movie does enough things right that I’m willing to let other issues, like a lack of originality, slide.

By: Sam Juliano

Sam Juliano — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 23:14:20 +0000

Alexander, I understand where you are coming from, but it is VERY hard not to take some kind of heed when a director tells a packed theatre that he basically has THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT in mind when he made THE LAST WINTER. If he was conciosusly or unconsciously trying to emulate BLAIR WITCH, well then we must at least take that into consideration for something here. If it turned out that it didn’t have resemblences fine, but I saw them and so did a vast majrity of the critics. They can’t all be wrong.
Am I coming on too strong? I hope not. You are one of my favorite people here!

By: Sam Juliano

Sam Juliano — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 23:09:55 +0000

I am a huge fan for over almost 40 years of Val Lewton’s films, and have seen both CAT PEOPLE and I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE over 60 times each in my life. I know all about the “implied and not seen” moniker that Lewton employed through all his directors in those films, and I that this particular style actually was perfected in these two as well as in THE LEOPARD MAN, THE SEVENTH VICTIM, THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE and even in the long-unseen GHOST SHIP (now released.)
The definitive scholarly treatise of Lewton is the superb “Vail Lewton: The Veil Terror” by Joel E. Siegel (not the deceased film critic) in which this device is examined within the context of the individual films.
Jeff, I hated CLOVERFIELD as well, but if I would have liked it, I would not have fully accepted that it is derivative. I am not so sure you can have it both ways.

By: Alexander Coleman

Alexander Coleman — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 23:02:39 +0000

I know it probably sounds a little strange but usually if a filmmaker is making his (or her) film consciously derivative of past films in their own way (stylistically, thematically, what have you) and they weave it into their movie with grace and intelligence, I’m naturally inclined to think, “Interesting/that’s good/clever,” etceteras. When you find out that it’s backed up by an actual statement–like say, David Fincher noting the similarities between All the President’s Men and Zodiac–you can take it more thoroughly to heart, or be credulous about it (though I agree that it’s always prudent to not necessarily trust the artist’s direct, straightforward statements, either–in fact, they may be and often are the last person whose word you should take as sacrosanct in these and other matters).

Tarantino, though, is a different animal, and I expect his films to be derivative of movies he loves and enjoys watching.

By: Jeff McM

Jeff McM — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 22:55:57 +0000

No, that makes perfect sense, Craig, depending on the film of course. For example, I’d say that Cloverfield was extremely derivative, but if I had liked it, I would have been happy to write that off and ignore it. Death Proof is obviously derivative of a bunch of things but I love it so I don’t care.

By: Craig Kennedy

Craig Kennedy — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 22:41:09 +0000

I was going to mention Cat People, but I don’t want to gang up on Sam :)

I will say that I think my not being engaged by a film exposes a film’s flaws more often than a film’s flaws cause me not to be engaged by a film…if that makes any sense.

In reasonable measure, bad dialogue or corny acting or a predictable plot or even derivative filmmaking are not deal breakers, but if I’m not enjoying a film, those things stick out. of course, the combination of those factors could easily lead to me not enjoying a film, but I’m looking for reasons here why sometimes we like films that are technically bad.

By: Jeff McM

Jeff McM — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:57:15 +0000

‘Implied rather than seen’ goes all the way back to Cat People, if not further.

Good question,Craig. Usually I’d say that the influenced vs. derivative line would be ‘as long as you’re not annoyed, it’s okay’ but I can think of movies that were obviously derivative but still entertained me, and vice versa so that can’t be it.

By: Sam Juliano

Sam Juliano — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:50:45 +0000

Fair enough Craig, perhaps “rip-off” is too strong an accusation, as nothing is pat here. But in the way the film was conceived, in trying to build jolts from what is mainly “implied” than actually seen and how it ultimately played out I sensed the “spirit” of the earlier film running through most of LAST WINTER’S running time. I acknowledge however that the film is not interpreted that way by everybody.

By: Craig Kennedy

Craig Kennedy — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:34:21 +0000

The question I think is at what point does a film that is influenced by another become derivative?

Other than its low budget and it’s technique of implying rather than showing, I didn’t get a huge whiff of Blair Witch off of Last Winter…at least not to the point I’d say it’s a rip off.

That’s not to say you’re wrong for disliking the film, Sam. I’m just not sure I completely buy your angle of attack.

Chuck, I haven’t seen Wendigo or Habit, so I can’t compare, but yeah it sounds like I’d have the same problem (with Wendigo at least) as I had with Last Winter.

By: Jeff McM

Jeff McM — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:31:02 +0000

I guess I just think the Blair Witch Project’s ‘overwhelming sense of dread’ to be a very specific type of emotion, something like being trapped in a Grimm fairy tale and totally dislocated from any proper grounding or sense of safety, which was not quite the same flavor I got from this movie.

By: Sam Juliano

Sam Juliano — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:25:47 +0000

I disagree with your middle paragraph as I don’t find the overwhelming sense as vague at all–it was the entire underpinning of the way was presented, and BLAIR WITCH was written all over it all the way up to that jolt that never really worked anyway. But there is nothing to be said there, we can only agree to disagree.

I agree with everything you say in paragraph 1 of your last post here and there is surely some reason in your final paragraph, if I don’t completely concur.

By: Jeff McM

Jeff McM — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:16:24 +0000

I’m just saying ‘influence’ is a lesser degree than ‘artistic model’ or ‘derivative’. For example, I think There Will Be Blood was influenced by The Shining, Giant, and Chinatown, but I don’t think any of those three movies served as an ‘artistic model’ for it, not in the same way you could say Citizen Kane, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, or Greed probably were.

My point is that I see very little Blair Witch in The Last Winter, and that ‘overpowering sense of dread’ is too vague and generic of a concept to attribute to a single influential movie, as if the BWP makers had invented it.

Last, I think it’s an accepted tenet of film or literary criticism that you can allow the filmmaker/author to inform your reaction to their work, but that it can be misleading to consider their interpretations of the work too highly. An author’s public statements can often be distorted ,or hesitant, or deliberately misleading. You have to react to what’s on the screen primarily.

By: Sam Juliano

Sam Juliano — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:00:13 +0000

Jeff, you are playing with semantics now. Using something as an artistic model surely must mean INFLUENCE by any standard of measurement?!?

I think the creator is who allows us to interpret what we do read and transcribe from a film. If I am to believe what you are now saying, then I should believe THE LAST WINTER wasn’t created by anyone–it just materialized out of nothing.

I already stated earlier that THE LAST WINTER was specifically in a thematic sense about global warming and ecological intrusion.

By: Jeff McM

Jeff McM — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 20:54:09 +0000

I would agree with that – Wendigo seemed to have a lot more set-up and a lot less pay-off than I would have liked.

By: Chuck

Chuck — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 20:52:42 +0000

I intend to check THE LAST WINTER-but the problems you guys have with it were my problems also with Fessenden’s WENDIGO-which seemed to be setting something up only to go virtually nowhere. I never saw HABIT, any better?

By: Jeff McM

Jeff McM — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 20:51:26 +0000

Let me repeat that there’s a difference between something ‘influencing’ a film and something being ‘an artistic model’. The St. Francisville Experiment and Cloverfield are movies that can accurately claim to have used Blair Witch as ‘artistic models’ because they’re all basically the same movie – first-person handheld camera work in a scary, unpredictable setting. The Last Winter isn’t shot first-person or documentary-style and is about a lot of things beyond being lost in the wilderness. I’m sure Fessenden mentioned BWP because it is indeed one of the most influential horror movies of the last ten years, but a creator’s comments always have to take a back seat to what the primary source – the film itself – actually tells and shows you.

By: Sam Juliano

Sam Juliano — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 20:45:03 +0000

Yeah, but when the director openly admits in front of a theatre audience that THE BLAIR WITCH greatly influenced his film, would you dispute that??? The critics were simply evincing acknowledgement of Mr. Fessenden’s own admission. Fessenden subsequently stated the the “overpowering sense of dread” was his main thrust and that BLAIR WITCH provided him with the model to emulate.

That’s exactly why I call it derivative.

Just to add one last point: I am a fan of John Carpenter’s THE THING, even if I consider BALIR WITCH as rubbish—gimicky and disposable.

By: Sam Juliano

Sam Juliano — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 20:41:41 +0000

One more point, Jeff. I agree with you on Mr. Perlman, he was the one actor who gave a commendable performance.

By: Jeff McM

Jeff McM — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 20:41:29 +0000

Sure, but ‘being influenced’ and using handheld aren’t the same thing as using a movie as ‘an artistic model’. The two movies are still more different than they are similar and I think calling it ‘highly derivative’ is inaccurate.
I didn’t read a lot of reviews of this movie but if a lot of people mentioned Blair Witch, I’d say they were incorrect also.