What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? Mommie Dearest and Sunset Boulevard. There’s a glorious freedom to the psycho-biddy genre. Playing deranged dames whose sanity has been shattered by loneliness, iconic actresses like Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and Gloria Swanson are given cart blanche to go wild in tales of female rage that are scandalous, grotesque, and often unapologetically campy. Writer/director Neil Jordan (Interview With A Vampire, The Crying Game) extends this grand opportunity to Isabelle Huppert with Greta. The French luminary makes a feast of its tale of female fury, chewing the scenery with a gruesome relish, then licking her chops, leaving us craving more. [Read more…]
A Time of Monsters: An Updated Suspiria For Our Dark Age
There are several ways of remembering a nightmare. Interpreting a classic work always requires a true sense of daring. When literature has become canon or a film a cultural staple, updating a story for a new age will bring with it the baggage of decades. For our new era of ghouls and menacing shadows, director Luca Guadagnino has decided to conjure his own interpretation of Dario Argento’s 1977 Suspiria. This new version, nearly 3 hours in length, is not worthy of the label “remake.” Guadagnino has taken Argento’s pulpy, color-strewn cult object and transformed it into a work of an almost occult power. It is a film set in the very decade of the original, but it seems to be channeling our own, present sense that dark forces at work in the world. To compare the two versions is to compare two eras and mindsets, two interpretations of the extreme and satanic. [Read more…]
Suspiria
There are several ways of remembering a nightmare. Interpreting a classic work always requires a true sense of daring. When literature has become canon or a film a cultural staple, updating a story for a new age will bring with it the baggage of decades. For our new era of ghouls and menacing shadows, director Luca Guadagnino has decided to conjure his own interpretation of Dario Argento’s 1977 Suspiria. This new version (2018), nearly 3 hours in length, is not worthy of the label “remake.” Guadagnino has taken Argento’s pulpy, color-strewn cult object and transformed it into a work of an almost occult power. It is a film set in the very decade of the original, but it seems to be channeling our own, present sense that dark forces at work in the world. To compare the two versions is to compare two eras and mindsets, two interpretations of the extreme and satanic. [Read more…]