Ten Days of Terror!: The Company of Wolves

Films: The Company of Wolves
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

I’ve watched the bulk of the first quarter of the They Shoot Zombies list. By that I mean that I’ve seen more than 90% of the first 250 movies, and of the ones I haven’t seen a sizable portion are silent, less than 30 minutes long, or both. So, when I find one that is in that top group of films, I’m excited to see it. For the most part, I can expect that it’s going to be good. They aren’t always, and The Company of Wolves is sadly in the group that isn’t very good. I desperately wanted to like this and there’s a lot here to like. There is a serious problem with it that puts a pall over everything that it does, though. We’ll get there. It’s very depressing.

We start in the present day in the real world. A young girl named Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson) is sleeping and dreams herself into a forest straight out of Hansel and Gretel. Her parents (David Warner and Tusse Silberg) and her sister Alice (Georgia Slowe) are there as well. Soon into the dream, Alice is run down and killed by wolves. With the family in mourning, Rosaleen goes to stay with her grandmother (Angela Lansbury). Grandma was planning on knitting a red shawl for Alice but decides instead to make it for Rosaleen. As she does, she tells her granddaughter a couple of stories.

Vampire Weekend

Films: Byzantium
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on Fire!

How exactly do I explain a film like Byzantium? On the surface, this is a vampire movie, but it’s a vampire movie unlike any I’ve seen before. It’s one that very much creates its own mythology, its own method of vampire creation, and a great deal more. It’s also terribly melodramatic in places, but in a way that is surprisingly appealing. It’s gritty at times, and seedy, with several moments of surprising violence, and yet there is a great deal of poetry here. And for whatever reason, no one seems to know this movie.

We are first introduced to the two women we will spend most of the movie with. Clara (Gemma Arterton) works as a stripper while Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan) appears to be just a bit too young to be employed. What we learn right away is that these are women who are something other than human. Eleanor, we learn, writes the story of her life frequently and tosses the pages to the wind. Some of them have been collected by an old man who lives in the same building; he claims he knows what she is and asks her to kill him. She does, and we learn that she is, more or less, a vampire.

Wednesday Horror: Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles

Film: Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.

Years ago, I had a student write a paper on vampire movies. It was her contention that vampires switched from being monsters to being love interests for teenagers with the release of Interview with the Vampire. It’s probably been a good 20 years since I’d seen this, although I remembered it pretty well. Still, it’s worth a rewatch, and I figured I might as well revisit it. I remembered liking this the first time through and thinking that parts of it were pretty homoerotic. I forgot just how homoerotic it was, though, and I also forgot how much fire there is in this movie.

We start in the present as interviewer Daniel Molloy (Christian Slater) sits down to interview Louis de Pointe du Lac (Brad Pitt). Louis quickly and openly admits to being a vampire and demonstrates some of his abilities to Daniel before telling his story. We jump back to 1791 New Orleans, where Louis is dealing with the recent death of his wife and child. While Louis isn’t completely suicidal, he’s the next closest thing, actively looking for someone to help him shuffle off his mortal coil. It is in this frame of mind that he meets Lestat (Tom Cruise), a vampire who is only too happy to give Louis the gift of death and then undeath.

Picks from Chip: Ondine

Film: Ondine
Format: DVD from Peotone Public Library through interlibrary loan on laptop.

This is the eleventh in a series of twelve movies selected by Chip Lary.

I try to go into movies as neutrally as possible. That said, there are times when you can’t help but have a preconceived notion. Ondine had two strikes against it before it even made it into the spinner. The first is that at the top of the box is Colin Farrell. I like Colin Farrell in In Bruges and that’s about it. He’s okay in Minority Report. Otherwise, I don’t have a lot of use for him. Second, the movie’s tagline is, “The truth is not what you know. It’s what you believe.” That’s the kind of bullshit that makes people think that the Earth is flat and only 6,000 years old. Screw that noise.

An Irish fisherman with the unlikely name of Syracuse (Farrell) is out on his boat one day. When he pulls up his net, he finds a young woman (Alicja Bachleda) inside. The woman claims to not remember her name or anything else and also says that she doesn’t want to be seen by anyone. Syracuse, nicknamed “Circus” from his drinking days, takes her to his late mother’s house, a place where she can live without anyone seeing her.

Love and War

Film: The End of the Affair
Format: DVD from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

When the Oscars roll around lately, the cry goes up that poor Leonardo DiCaprio has never won a statue for himself. Where are the people complaining for Julianne Moore? She’s gone 0-for-4, but no one seems to be pissing and moaning about that. And really, is there a better un-Oscared actress currently in film? I don’t think so. One of her four nominations happened to have the bad luck of coming out the same year as Boys Don’t Cry, which meant that her performance in The End of the Affair really didn’t have a lot of hope for a win. That’s really too bad.

What I was excited about going in here is that this is based on a novel by Graham Greene, who happens to be a favorite of mine. It’s actually kind of odd that I like Greene, because he was a particularly Catholic writer and I’m a particular heretic and apostate. Nevertheless, I like Greene’s work quite a bit. I like the stories and I like the man’s skill with a phrase. More to the point, Greene often had a particularly interesting moral slant on many of his stories. Morality sites at the heart of his work, and that’s absolutely no different here.

Mona Lisa

Film: Mona Lisa
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

I find it difficult not to enjoy the performances of Bob Hoskins. Who Framed Roger Rabbit was (I think) my introduction to him as an actor. He always seems like the sort of guy it would be cool to know. Hoskins often plays men with a gruff exterior and a heart of gold. It’s difficult for me to not find that appealing, especially when it’s done as well as Hoskins tends to do it. That’s definitely the case with Mona Lisa, a crime/romance film that has managed to slip under my radar until today.

We start by learning a little bit about George (Hoskins). There’s tension between him and his wife, caused by George spending seven years in prison. Now that he’s out, he’s looking for some payback from Mortwell (Michael Caine), the man he used to work for. He’s given a job he doesn’t much want: driving a high-class prostitute named Simone (Cathy Tyson) to and from her appointments. There is immediate friction between the two, of course, and eventually, they come to both like and trust each other.

Getting One's Irish Up

Film: The Butcher Boy
Format: DVD from personal collection on laptop.

Sometimes I buy a film on a whim. I don’t do it that often, but for the last four years, when I found a film for cheap that happened to be on the 1001 Movies List, I’d buy it. Such is the case with The Butcher Boy, which I bought several years ago when I found a new copy for $3 in a bargain bin somewhere. I knew that eventually I’d get around to watching it. “Eventually” happened to be tonight.

The Butcher Boy is one of those difficult to explain films that is much better experienced than to have described, but I’ll do my best. This is the story of Francie Brady (Eamonn Owens). Francie seems like a normal, if unnaturally high-spirited, boy. He gets into typical trouble with his friend Joe Purcell (Alan Boyle). Much of this involves a local boy named Phillip Nugent (Andrew Fullerton), which makes Francie the problem of the month for Phillip’s mother (Fiona Shaw). What isn’t evident right away is that Francie isn’t merely a high-spirited kid.

Dude Looks Like a Lady

Film: The Crying Game
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

Every now and again, a film comes out that has a moment that transcends everything else about the movie. The Crying Game is very much that sort of a film. There’s a reveal about halfway through that defines it completely. Even if you haven’t seen the film, you more than likely know exactly what I’m talking about. I knew the big secret of The Crying Game within a month of its release. Silly, stupid me thought that the reveal was actually central to the plot of this film. It so totally isn’t. I mean, it’s certainly more than a simple plot point, but the movie hardly revolves around it.

Instead, we’re thrown immediately into a situation with a young black British soldier named Jody (Forest Whitaker) romancing a young Irish girl named Jude (Miranda Richardson). It’s evident that we’re in for a good old film cliché right off the bat. There are some white guys who seem to have a real issue with the black guy hanging on a white woman, and the pair gets followed when they leave. It’s a lousy trick, really. The easiest way to get the audience to dislike someone is to play to an old, failed prejudice like the one about interracial couples. It’s such an easy way to sway an audience. I was, I admit, a little put out.