Live and Die and Live Again

Join me in raising a glass to Quibi, the bite-sized video service that everyone in the globe knew would fail except the leadership at Quibi. From launch to shut down in six months — that's truly remarkable.

Although it's funny to see this idea blow upward so robustly in the faces of Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman, it sucks for those lower on the ladder. They worked difficult to produce shows they knew no one would watch, and now they're out of their jobs. I'm sure at that place was skillful stuff on the service! But I was never, ever going to watch it.

In better news, after last week's minor respite, our selections for this week get back to the Blench Weblog themes you know and love/hate.

"The Wailing" (2016)

Prime Video, rated R, 156 minutes

Jun Kunimura in "The Wailing." Photograph source: Prime Video.

There's a new rule that I desire to implement, and the rule is that every flick must contain dueling religious rituals set to increasingly loud and corybantic music.

"The Wailing" taught me this. "The Wailing" also taught me — reminded me, to exist more than accurate — that South korea makes improve horror films than anyone else. Those filmmakers understand the importance of feeling, of atmosphere, is much greater than that of jump scares.

Here we have Jong-Goo (Kwak Practice-won), a detective who is non quite bumbling only certainly non aristocracy at his chore. He messes up sometimes, which isn't unremarkably a huge deal in his small hamlet; null much happens there. Until stuff starts happening there. Brutal killings, a string of them, each by a different person. The perpetrators are continued by the brutal rash they share, pus prominently presented. This rash/expletive remains, draining them of their mental capacities, until they eventually die.

Signs begin to point to a secretive Japanese man (Jun Kunimura) as the one putting a curse on these people. Some even refer to him as a ghost, even though he's visibly flesh and claret. There are stories of him eating the raw meet of a deer carcass on all fours deep in the woods, his eyes glowing blood-red. When Jong-Goo has a dream that matches these stories, information technology'due south plenty to spring him into activity. He and his partner (Son Kang-gook) pay him a visit.

What they detect chills them, merely it's not enough to brand an arrest. And things become from bad to worse when Jong-Goo returns dwelling house to find his boyish girl (Kim Hwan-hee) starting to develop the murderous rash.

Kim Hwan-hee and Kwak Do-won in "The Wailing." Photo source: Prime Video.

"The Wailing" is frightening in all the right ways. Director Na Hong-jin keeps the motion picture's mysteries locked away for much of the run time, keeping the audience guessing as to what's actually happening. The surface level story is dark, and the unsaid story might be even darker once you connect a few dots and think near how these people are getting sick. But the moving-picture show won't practice that for you; "The Wailing" is a complex story, and if you want to solve it all, you might have to sentinel it twice (at least). It touches on a lot of things, chief among them what it means to believe in something. Is sight and bear on plenty? Or can our eyes and hands be deceived? How do nosotros ever know who to trust?

Information technology also tries to exist a lot of horror genres at once. There are scenes that pay homage to possession films, zombie films, cult films and serial killer films. Somehow, it all works, maybe considering the whole narrative is fractured from the start. If a film is consistently messy, information technology is really messy at all? Or is that part of the appeal?

Complexity bated, the film does come to a conclusive ending, and information technology'southward a knockout. Not one that will brand sleeping easy, heed you lot. I don't want whatever complaints if this keeps y'all up at night. Merely it'south a great one nonetheless, paving a future for certain characters without needing a sequel to see their stories through. You already know what lies in wait for them, for better or worse.

And again, before I move on: I really must insist that all movies feature dueling rituals. I cannot stress plenty how compelling that scene is. Scout it and thank me later.

"Mad Max: Fury Road" (2015)

Google Play, rated R, 121 minutes

Tom Hardy in "Mad Max: Fury Road."

Ryan, why are y'all putting a straight-upwards action movie in Blench Web log? Oasis't you lot strayed from the theme enough this year? I mean, final week's installment had two movies that barely qualified nether whatsoever metric. Where'due south "The Haunting of Bly Manor?" Where's "Rebecca?" Where'due south the HORROR?!?

Good questions, Ryan. First of all, close up. Second of all, my web log, my rules. Tertiary of all, one of those might be coming next week. 4th of all, "Mad Max: Fury Road" is the ultimate Halloween picture show. Or information technology should exist, anyway. Actually, nosotros should be talking about the miracle that is this movie every 24-hour interval for the balance of time. But let's focus on the Halloween of information technology all for now. Is information technology set in the fall? Tough to tell when it's set in the apocalyptic Australian outback. A strike against it? Perhaps, simply mind to my other points showtime:

• Put all of the characters in this movie, large and small roles alike, into a hat. Choice one. Boom, that'southward your Halloween costume. A great choice. You seriously cannot go wrong. Look at this guy. Expect at this person. LOOK AT THE DOOF WARRIOR. There has never been a cooler minor character in whatsoever pic than the Doof Warrior, the leader of the War Boys' traveling battle band who signals his army's arrival by admittedly shredding on an electric guitar (that shoots flames) while strapped to bungee cords on a big-ass truck.
• Furiosa (Charlize Theron). That'south information technology, that's the bullet point.
• The opening scene, where Max (Tom Hardy) tries to escape from the State of war Boys while being haunted by visions of his by failures, is incredibly scary, even more and then considering director George Miller, an actual insane person, made the decision to speed upward the footage to the indicate where the man eye tin canmerely barelycomprehend what it is seeing. The outcome is an almost 3D-like event, or like you're at a haunted business firm with never-catastrophe strobe lights. The first time I watched information technology, I wondered if my brain was breaking. Now I call back it's brilliant. At that place are other frightening things in this movie, such as the quick shot of the crow fishers in the swamp, merely cypher beats the opening scene.
• For someone who doesn't become that much to do, Immortan Joe is an all-fourth dimension dandy villain, mostly considering his name is Immortan Joe and he looks like this. (Costumes!) Miller makes him terrifying through other people's reactions to him as much every bit his own actions. When he runs, he looks like an developed version of a "Power Rangers" villain and it rules.

Charlize Theron in "Mad Max: Fury Road."

• Furiosa!
• It is genuinely incredible to me that no died while making this movie. The entire movie, more or less, is a massive machine hunt involving burn down and big rigs and off-road cars and leaping motorcycles and many, many pole stunts. Tom Hardy spends 45 or and then minutes literally strapped to the front of a motorcar going 140 mph like the figurehead on the bow of a ship. If you take a half hour, I highly recommend this behind-the-scenes wait at the film and how it pulled off a lot of these stunts. It's worth it to hear how genuine the terror in Hardy'due south voice is when talking about it all.
• At one point, a grapheme says "Witness me, bloodbag," a seemingly breathless trio of words to anyone who has not watched the film, just in actuality a powerful and emotional trio of words. That'south what skillful movies practise: create a globe from scratch, teach y'all information technology's rules and civilisation and then make you care about those things.
• A dude gets his face ripped off, which is pretty ill.
• FURIOSA!!!!!!!
• "Fury Route" manages to simultaneously be a "women get revenge on their abusers and take control of their lives" movie and be a "dudes stone" movie, which is an unheard of feat. Information technology should take won Best Picture for that lonely. (Thank you, "Spotlight," a motion picture merely journalists remember exists now.)

I feel similar I have made my case for "Fury Route," the all-time activity motion picture of at to the lowest degree the past xx years if not longer. If, however, you lot even so have some complaints, please feel free to email them to [email protected].

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Source: https://www.yourobserver.com/article/cringe-blog-i-live-i-die-i-live-again

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