Not to be confused with the 2022 film by Ti West, let’s start with the trailer for “X”, marketing itself as a ‘mix of melodrama, thriller and camp,’ which is giving you more than I chose to go on before watching the debut film by Scott J. Ramsey and produced by The Foundation–an independent production company founded by Ramsey, producer Hannah Katherine Jost and producer Kevin De Nicolo.

OK, I’m gonna live-blog this movie, in a stream of conscious kinda way because I have no idea what this is about and I like Hitchcockian twists and turns.

Visually, ‘X’ delivers from the first frame. It looks good, sounds good, and the color-post is good. I should begin by saying that Eyes Wide Shut is among my top three favorite Kubrick films – not because I think it is one of his three best, but because it is one of my favorites – mainly from its utterly bizarre tone, Sidney Pollack’s incredible performance, the set design of the masked ball, and the weirdness of a London Soundstage for New York.

As we get going, ‘X’ is generally well-acted, posted, and realized. Taking place in a house that, from my own experience is likely in the Sunset Hills of Hollywood.

A fancy title introduces us to Act 2. I really can’t talk about specifics because it would all be spoilers. But I can say that the always-tough-to-master-middle-of-the-movie is cumbersome. The beguiling and mysterious madame of the party suddenly becomes less intriguing with the house lights on. We are given her inner monologue as a ham-fisted tool for further exposition. The sound mix is now distractingly conspicuous. The non-diegetic music is meekly low in the mix. All the intrigue and tension of the 1st act is diffused.

In the end, I feel like I have invested in a 90-minute TV movie of Rear Window for the YA market. By the middle of the second act I’m pretty checked out; scenes about making cookies, vacuuming floors, expositing about whatever is going on, just dragging on. The dubby dialogue becomes too much for me to deal with. Yes, out of respect to the filmmakers I watch on.

The anticipated big twist comes at the end of a little rope of mini twists. I have to give the film points for originality. Though the audio production leaves a lot to be desired…look – I feel terrible picking at these sorts of issues – because what matters here is that someone made a full-length feature film, and tried stuff. Sometimes it is awkward, and ham-fisted and about as sharp a scone. But there are moments.

I don’t know if I can recommend this film in good conscience, but for those seeking the slightly avante-garde, fans of Lynch, Kubrick, A24, Houston may find some diversion in seeing things stylistic nods. I hate reviewing films sometimes, because sometimes I have to say mean things, and I want to support indies, but it does no good if I’m writing sycophantic, apologetic puff pieces, so, take it as it came to me, and how I received it.

Congratulations for getting the film in the can, and in front of a reviewer who watched it all the way through.

The post “X” A Film from Director Scott J. Ramsey, Reviewed appeared first on TheCulturepin.com.

I love this movie. It starts off feeling like a student project but immediately I am triggered by it because it is getting it right and that is all I could hope to say for a film. Can I end the review now?

No. No one’s looking at me – no one is reading this review. No one cares. I am writing too much. My grammar is shit. Ok, I’ll stop beating myself up. Sound like all of the social media is judging me – why do I even bother. Say something to them. Don’t say everything out loud. I think I am talking out loud. Am I talking out loud?

I probably drink too much. I think I am an emotional eater. Why did I bake chocolate cookies at 4 am when I just want a piece of chocolate cake? At 4 am. “Someone’s going to notice.”

This movie has a nice soundtrack. The ambient guitars. A sense of tension and sublimation. Ok – “let’s just take a moment, deep breath, here we go. Same as every day.” This movie is so on point it feels trite. Oh, maybe that is just me. Should I admit that?

Why is the lighting so garish? I can tell someone tried.

Oh, the hero is an embalmer. I will never be that. They go full magical realism. OK, here it comes. When I was a kid it would take me hours to get ready for family events – because I thought I was too fat, my clothes didn’t fit right, I would seem fake, I was too tired, I wasn’t good enough, I was always late, I was too hot, I hadn’t had time to eat breakfast, why was I so tired?

There’s a scene that feels like a high school filmmaking thesis on Chinatown. I don’t know why the solid attempt at lighting feels nothing more than adequate or the acting feels like an industrial. They are doing fine. Why am I so judgy? I love what I am seeing.

I would always hold my breath when driving by a cemetery because I was told that you lose that many seconds of life when you breathe.

I love this scene about buying cans of sardines at the gourmet grocery store. That survival instinct. The self-consciousness that you are buying too many. I remember having those terrifying moments in the grocery store. Playing it cool while I couldn’t afford everything at Whole Foods. That idea of being “almost there” while standing in the checkout line.

I remember telling Deb at Ralph’s grocery that I was leaving for Canada. She had become a good friend in recent weeks, as I was at the grocery store almost daily. (I am an emotional eater). She said – oh man take me with you.

Now the protagonist is drinking something late at night. He flops onto the bed exhausted with himself. I am writing this at 10:45 am. I haven’t been to bed yet.

Why does this movie get me?

That’s five hundred words.

Am I going to run this through Grammarly? Run it through Grammarly. Am I going to hit publish? Fuck.

Don’t say these things out loud. Watch this movie. Understand the thing. Those weirdos. They are OK, there are just super dialled-up on the ontology. Be kind.

Sometimes the protagonist literally exposits what is happening. The filmmaker voice-over what he is thinking. It’s so glib and trite. It’s fine. It’s on point. So painfully on-point that it’s amazing. I am thinking about that time me and Kat went for dinner at Hugo’s. I used to drive then. She gave me two books. Not one, two. Who was I then? What happened to me since? Why is there a pandemic? I can’t do anything about it. There is some terrible ADR in this movie. I don’t mind.

Wow, I really liked this hand-made film. Thank you film for validating my experience.

Hit Publish. Are you fucking nuts?

No one cares.

Publish.

Gregory Samuel’s debilitating social anxiety and self-deprecating inner voice prevent him from leading the “normal life” he so desires. The young funeral director’s fears are confronted when he is given a 30-day leave of absence and forced to address his social phobia. His solution — he won’t leave his apartment for the entire month. His respite is put to the test by Emma, a curious, spirited neighbor looking for a friend.

From writer/director Mike Melo, and starring Hunter Davis, Samantha Creed, and Alan Pelz-Sharpe, SUNNY SIDE UP it premiered On Demand December 4, 2020.

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When I write my reviews I tend to ‘live-blog’ them, giving my honest impression as I go. I review a lot of indie games, usually coming in cold – with very little context – and it is usually not hard to tell what level of polish we will face by the time the intro screen is done. Writer-director Nicole Groton’s debut feature-length film Darkness In Tenement 45 is no exception – a series of yellow archival footage over an of score prepares us for a home movie, a passion project. The film, which was primarily funded through a Kickstarter campaign features over 20 associate producers in the end credits and ten pages of 2 columns of backers – roughly 460 backers! That is a lot of faith in this project.

But as we get to picture – we see a highly stylized world that feels like some out of early Jeunet – Delicatessen, or City of Lost Children: green patina walls, lit candles, brass candelabras, jade and ochre color palette.

A broad spectrum of ethnic and age-diverse characters are introduced early on (which always is refreshing) – using a performing style that feels almost whimsical; they all speak in a sort of mid-Atlantic pentameter: are they a commune? Does living in a bunker cause you speak like a Mennonite? Was this a creative decision? It is like watching a school play that still somehow keeps you from leaving for the restroom.

We begin with the group gathering around a table with all the characters discussing their inventory list – standard post-apocalyptic fetishism. Here the score turns into subdued woodwinds and strings-driven melodrama, distant horns that might be the horns of Gabriel from Thomas Newman’s score for Michael Tolkin’s The Rapture. The score eventually turns to Jackie Gleason-style mid-century big orchestra mood-music – a terrific stylistic twist. Composer Logan Rees, who works from LA but developed his musical career in New Orleans, brings a wonderfully unexpected, swooning and thematic musical context throughout the film.

Turn On Some Lights

The cinematography and lighting are quite good. Though it appears a lot was done with color timing and vignetting in post – the soft light wraps beautifully around the actors’ faces, handling the breadth of skin tones marvellously. Frequently the frame looks like a Norman Rockwell painting hanging on the wall of a Fallout game.

So cumulatively there are some nice creative decisions. On the other hand, the film is painfully slow. It is essentially a soporific Eugene O’Neill play that happens on a bisected two-storey set, that we are watching from the auditorium. I want to make sure to set expectations for anyone coming at this thinking they are signing up for a radioactive apartment horror.

There’s Something Happening Here…

There are some creepy dream sequences and, without giving too much away, a character arc that reminds me of John Wyndham’s novels or the first season of Umbrella Academy – that is to say a little magic realism. The anachronistic visuals – of a 19th-century New England (apparently New York) Architecture blended with Harry S. Truman era trappings (gas masks, etc) lend some mystery and intrigue, but ultimately only allude to a world that may never extend beyond the imagination.

Waiting to Exhale

After I am done watching the film, I pore over the press materials – apparently, someone at Dread Central breathlessly proclaimed this to be a ‘candidate movie of the year’ and an ‘absolute triumph.’ I would point that reviewer to some of the aforementioned materials I have cited in my impressions here, to anchor their astonishment.

That said, the Darkness in Tenement 45 take some chances, for all its references, and pulls off some nice beats. Could be a sign of good things to come from the director. The door has definitely been cracked open.

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For those who find the macabre irresistible, who side with Oogie Boogie rather than Santa Clause, who used to have a flashlight beside the bed to read after the lights were turned out and who make sure their toes aren’t sticking out of the covers in case a shark comes and bites them off, you may align with the ideas in the documentary Scary Stories.

This is a chronicle of the mania, the paranoia, the alarmism and the glee around the books by Alvin Schwartz’ unapologetic Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (as illustrated by Stephen Gammell) that were banned, reviled, blacklisted.

A series of interviews with over 40 subjects, interspersed with provisionally animated interstitials in the style of illustrator Stephen Gammell, the film feels low budget, yet deftly crafted and approachable. In fact, the multi-media format maintains interest – using audio filters, different color effects, even dramatization, in addition to other atmospheric variations to keep the film visually and tonally intriguing.

Does this amalgam succeed? While it at times feels rather bespoke, it is also the film’s charm. This feels like a film made by enthusiasts for enthusiasts and is technically sufficiently competent to not prove distracting.

Stephen Gammell’s Unforgettable Dark Visions

It is a treat to hear actual interviews with everyone from friends, family, fans of Alvin Schwartz to R.L. Stine himself. The film then veers into Gammell’s dark and morbid illustrations that burned a brand into the minds of so many youngsters that to this day they can hardly revisit these images, while others have leaned in and created photorealistic images, clay sculptures, dioramas, 3D models and beyond.

The question is why – why do we obsess over these nightmarish visions? What is it about the twisted and dark visions that we both peer through our fingers and still obsessively manifest them?

We explore the family stories of reading these books to children to fertilize their imaginative turf, the fans who get full-length tattoo sleeves, the defiance of the book bans by the schools and libraries (even by the librarians).

We discover that Schwartz was also a dedicated researcher of old folktales and popular antique ghost stories, drawing from a legacy of successful and enduring spooky tales while affording them a contemporary spin. But part of Schwartz’s success also comes from his humor that used punchlines as perfect twists in classic short story form, preying on assumption and expectation and reminding the reader of the myopia of their bias and indoctrination.

Face the Darkness

For what reason should we avoid fear and darkness? Does it turn us into killers and monsters or does it teach us to face those things from which we run? We learn that it has to do with exposing those matters of reality that may one day prove exceedingly uncomfortable – indeed this form of exposure to anxiety and terror may, in fact, prove to galvanize us later on against shock and paralysis in face of the unknown, outre, unfamiliar. It may serve as a foundation to investigate rather than react to the unknown and unfamiliar.

Whatever the reason for the particular timing of this documentary, by the time you read this you may also see that Schwartz and Hammel’s iconic Scary Stories is being turned into a major motion picture by none other than Guillermo del Toro. By that time this humble documentary may be eclipsed, and in that its value may double, for the intimate stories shared by those who remembered it when…

Watch the trailer for the documentary “Scary Stories” below:

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But I still watch. Whether it is Altered Carbon or The Expanse, Electric Dreams or sundry low budget affairs with great posters that stuff the catalog of Amazon Prime – and sometimes, just every so often – I see a cool new idea, a new spin, an interesting moment that makes it kinda worth it.

So here we have Division 19 from director Suzie Halewood – from all appearances a cross between Elysium and Edtv, mixed with Hunger Games and HBO’s OZ. The Running Man (it is pretty The Running Man, plotwise).

The premise is that people get sent to prison for whatever reason and must fight their way to freedom by winning their way to freedom in what is essentially a Big Brother snuff film broadcast on every available surface of this dystopian version of Los Angeles, creatively titled “PrisonTV.”

Bleach bypass? Check. Anamorphic flares? Check. Giant screen TVs on buildings? Check.

In what may by design be a slow, contemplative pace, the first 15 minutes are generally uneventful and full of handheld shots of Los Angeles, where I live – the only amazing thing about them being how empty the streets are. Actors with authentically interesting accents and some excellent capabilities, including Linus Roache (Mandy), Clarke Peters (the Wire), seethe lines about plans and plots and what should have been and how to stick it to the man.

If this were an intellectual thought piece, where characters drive the focus and interest, then I could understand the pace and tone – but the story really isn’t so interesting and, despite their best efforts – the actors can only work with that they are served and they all do competent work here.

On Ontology

What people tend to miss about Blade Runner is that it is seldom talking about itself or even self conscious of its own world. The world is incidental. What matters to those characters is meaning. It is one of the most perfect ontological treatise I have seen captured in a movie. In Division 19 – people get slammed up against chain link fences, rim lights rim, drone atmospheric soundtracks drone and the plot and the world is what is discussed.

I ask – in a world of rapidly emerging machine learning, foldable phones, hyperloops, volumetric capture, quantum computing and all the other stuff that will seem as quaint as AOL installation CDs in a couple of years – can Sci-Fi writers not go deeper into conjecture?

I will say that the humorous little cartoon insertions about the joys of the RFID chip injection procedures affords a chilling echo of the the RealID initiative currently being rolled out across the US, and the Chinese Social Credit System.

If anything, Division 19 will serve as a wonderful nugget of cultural anthropology – a view of Los Angeles, circa 2019 – ironically the year in which Blade Runner took place, and looked far more strange and esoteric than this cynical postulation of an empty and culture-free reality with no redeeming qualities.

Also, there are some nice anachronistic, and counter-intuitive music choices – piano waltzes, acoustic guitars or Vic Damone singing Stranger in Paradise in Kismet – and the like. Also the sound design is good, bringing the various VFX and subtle details to life.

A Polite Approach

Nothing I say here is out of spite for this film – in fact, there are some nice settings, interesting looks, some tender moments present here that elevate it above similar fare – it is more the wish that we could get away from the completely overused tropes of the genre and create some new lines of thinking. The very nature of the medium is to speculate on possible outcomes and advancements and cautionary tales, but just relying on the same aesthetics, shots, characters, stilts the possibilities.

The idea that everything we do will be televised as a reality seems quaintly archaic in a world nearing the end of Tik Tok and Instagram. To be honest Idiocracy felt more prescient. I think that the present reality is not only more advanced but far scarier. This notion that there will be a future not wholly affected by climate change, mass migrations of populations, spatialized technologies like VR and AR (and whatever terminology we will ultimately used for same,) is getting harder to omit as a point of departure from the present.

Division 19 reaches theaters for a limited engagement April 2019 from Uncork’d Entertainment.

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