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Film: Dumplings (Gau ji)
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

I have to wonder about the creation of the film Dumplings (or Gau ji if you prefer). This film was released in 2004, the same year as what is known in the U.S. as Three...Extremes, an anthology film. The first film in that anthology is also called Dumplings and is also directed by Fruit Chan. It’s the half-length version of this movie, with some differences, at least in terms of the ending. Were they filmed at the same time? The cast is the same and the story is the same and a lot of it looks the same. Was it entirely re-shot? Why put them out in the same year?

That last question is perhaps the most interesting one. A great deal of what makes Dumplings work from the audience’s point of view is what the dumplings in the title actually are. Going into this already knowing didn’t make the film worse in any noticeable way, but it certainly got rid of a lot of the tension that I experienced in the anthologized version. The entire point of the film is to be deeply upsetting—it still is in places—but the shock is gone for most of it if you’ve seen the shorter version. Of course, if you see this version first, it spoils the anthologized story.

Frankenstein's Baby

Film: Poor Things
Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on various players.

I think it’s likely that everyone who is a film nerd has those few actors or directors that they don’t like that everyone else seems to. I’ve long maintained that Quentin Tarantino would be better if he stopped trying to be awesome and instead tried to just be good. I find myself in the same position with Yorgos Lanthimos. Everyone seems to love his work, and I don’t see it. I’ve delayed watching Poor Things for months because of this but simply can’t delay any longer. It’s the last of the 2023 Oscar movies I need to watch that I won’t have to pay for.

The positive news for me, though, is that with Poor Things I’ve figured out exactly what it is that I don’t like about Lanthimos. Seeing this, it seems so obvious that I don’t know why it took me this long to figure it out. Yorgos Lanthimos is the dark, alternate universe Wes Anderson, and now that I’ve typed it, I hate that fact even more.

Do You Really Want the Answer?

Film: Who Can Kill a Child? (¿Quién puerde matar a un niño?)
Format: Blu-ray from Cortland Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.

It’s good to have friends. As I make my way through the They Shoot Zombies list, the percentage of films that I can’t find gets a little bit higher with each film I watch. Up to today, Who Can Kill a Child? (or ¿Quién puerde matar a un niño? in the original Spanish) was the only movie I hadn’t seen in the top-200, and I couldn’t find it. I have a friend who is also a horror nerd and who happens to be a librarian...so she bought a copy for the library and gave it to me to watch even before it was checked in. Like I said, it’s good to have friends.

We had a running joke, calling this “the film we can’t name” until it showed up—it's not the kind of title you want to say out loud around children...or parents...or people. In the defense of the movie, this isn’t a film specifically about child murderers and the question it is asking is not seeking an answer in terms of actually naming people. There is a title drop in the film, and when it happens, the question is essentially a rhetorical one—what kind of person could do this?

I'm Spoiling This Movie

Film: The Uninvited (2009)
Format: DVD from Cortland Public Library on basement television.

I’m going to spoil The Uninvited in this review. I’m going to be nice enough to put that spoiler information below the fold—you'll have to click on “more” to get to it. I do that not out of respect for the movie, but out of respect for you, the reader. This is a movie that deserves to be spoiled because it is not merely a shoddy remake of a vastly superior film, but because the shock ending it utilizes has been used better in every other film I’ve seen that has used it.

In fact, I am not merely going to spoil this movie. In doing so, I will be spoiling a few other movies as well. I’m sorry about that. However, I’m going to be extremely careful in this respect. In the next paragraph, I’m going to mention the main film that this one is aping, mainly because this is technically a remake of that film. This means that if you haven’t seen that film (and you should—it's brilliant), you can avoid having it spoiled by not reading past paragraph #3. The other movies that essentially do the same thing as this one will be much further in the review, and most of those are old enough that they won’t be spoiled, and the one that is more recent is disappointing enough that you’re not losing much.

Teratophilia

Film: La Bête (The Beast)
Format: Streaming video from Kanopy on Fire!

I’m not shy about dropping the occasional curse on this blog. I tend to do so after the first couple of paragraphs to avoid offending anyone without their consent of opting to read further. That’s not going to be the case with La Bête (The Beast), a French horror film that is legitimately as much erotica as it is horror. You should know what you are getting into with this film. When I say that this is erotic horror, you need to think less “sexy” and more “porn for the artistic crowd.” This borders on In the Realm of the Senses levels of sexual content. If you decide to watch this, make sure your shades are drawn. You’ve been warned.

This is also going to be evident from the jump. La Bête opens with horses fucking, and again, I mean this legitimately. I mean giant horse dicks and pulsating horse vaginas. This is what lies ahead for us, because the “Beast” in the title is both a real beast and a sexual one, and so what’s to come is going to very much be what you’d expect if Penthouse decided to make Beauty and the Beast.

Death, Where Is Thy Sting?

Film: Ab-Normal Beauty (Sei mong se jun)
Format: Streaming video from Kanopy on Fire!

I think everyone, more or less, is affected by ideas of death. You can be repelled by it, fearful of it, anxious for it, curious about it, or compelled, but at some level, we’re all going to have to face thoughts of it at one time or another. It’s healthy to deal with it, but it’s also really easy for it to become an obsession, either faked (like many a goth) or real—and the real obsession can end up getting dangerous. A film like Ab-Normal Beauty (or Sei mong se jun in the original Cantonese) explores that idea, both in terms of fascination with death and dangerous obsession with it.

Jiney (Race Wong) is an award-winning art student, but despite all of the acclaim that she receives, she is unhappy with her work. No amount of praise from fellow student Anson (Anson Leung) will help her feel better about herself, and her roommate/girlfriend Jas (Race Wong’s real-life sister Rosanne Wong) tries to help her get her mind off of her disappointment in her work. When Jiney witnesses a fatal car accident, she uses the opportunity to start snapping pictures and finds herself drawn to these images of death.

Scooby-Dooby-Don't

Film: Lake of the Dead (De dødes tjern)
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on various players.

When I think about horror movies, there are parts of the world that I don’t really consider that much. Scandanavia is one of those places, and I’m not sure why that is. I’m happy to think of British and French horror, German and Spanish, Italian, Korean, Japanese, Mexican, and more, but Scandanavia rarely comes to mind, even with films like Midsommar. Lake of the Dead (or De dødes tjern in the original Norwegian) is very much an example of folk horror, using a remote cabin and a legend to create a sense of dread in the audience and the characters.

The film takes place in 1958, the present day for the characters involved. Author Bernhard Borge (Henki Kolstad) and his wife Sonja (Bjørg Engh) take a trip with four friends from Oslo. Those friends include psychoanalyst Kai (Erling Lindahl), editor Gabriel (André Bjerke), lawyer Harald (Georg Richter), and Harald’s fiancée Liljan (Henny Moan). The purpose of the trip is to visit Liljan’s brother Bjørn (Per Lillo Stenberg) at a cabin deep in the forest. When they arrive at the cabin, Bjørn is nowhere to be found.