Netflix has given me the gift of movies...

...whose previews I watched but never thought I'd actually see. My queue/saved movies as of 10:15 tonight:

Rudo i Cursi
An American Werewolf in London
Chandni Chowk to China
O'Horten
The Class
Good Dick
Departures
Guest of Cindy Sherman
Herb and Dorothy
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
Soul Power
Tokyo Sonata
The Garden
Eden Log
Frontrunners
Shiver
Splinter
a *lot* of Doctor Who

Movie night?

The Unborn

Friend: What is wrong with you lately? I mean there wasn't even a good 5 minutes of footage demonstrating that you normally have a cheery personality. You've been weird since the opening shot of this film.

Casey: OMG it turns out I was a twin. So was my grandmother, who I just found out is a survivor of Auschwitz, where her brother became evil and possessed due to Nazi experimentation.

Friend: ....

Casey: and now the dybbuk that possessed him and tried to possess my twin fetus-brother has a taste for my family's blood and wants to kill me.

Friend: wait, what?

Casey: You have to stay away from me. It's totally not safe.

Friend: Casey, this sort of sounds like a way of talking about survivor's guilt.

Casey: Stay away! The dybbuk comes for your family and your friends! It will kill everyone I love because it wants me!

Friend: That sort of sounds like you're talking about the SS.

Casey: No you don't understand. This is why my mom killed herself.

Friend: You know, the children of Holocaust survivors have a really difficult time coping; often they show symptoms of psychological strain similar to PTSD.

Casey: We are NOT CRAZY. I need to find a rabbi to perform an exorcism.

Rabbi: An exorcism? That sounds sort of crazy and catholic.

Casey: No. This plot is totally Jewish. See how I wear a star of David to protect me? When I touch it to the skin of someone possessed by the dybbuk it burns, just like a cross on a vampire.

Rabbi: You're so right! This text your grandmother gave you is totally in Hebrew. Because it is Hebrew, and I am a rabbi, I can read it. I know just the priest who can help us.

Priest: I can help you.

Casey: Are you sure this will be legitimately Jewish? I really don't want a Christian exorcism.

Priest: No totally. The way I do it is...really...Jewish....

Rabbi: Yes. Totally Jewish.

[10 minutes of traumatic exorcism footage]

Rabbi: I cannot fucking believe you were actually possessed. No one saw that coming.

Casey: Thank you for helping me! Can I come to temple on Friday?

Rabbi: Absolutely not. Never.

[epilogue]

Doctor: Congratulations Casey!! It's twins!!!

Casey: Congratulations? Are you kidding me? I'm like 17. I still live at home.
[photo: ... אבינו שבשמים, יתקדש שמך, תבוא מלכותך ייעשה רצונך כאשר בשמים גם בארץ]

Sukiyaki Western Django

You want to hear a funny story about Takashi Miike?

Once upon a time, when I was a naive young movie snob, I had never heard of Takashi Miike. I was happy. I lived in a little house in a little town, across the street from my best friend, Dave. One Sunday, as I puttered around, looking for something to do, my friend crossed the street for a visit. "I can't stay," he said, "but I brought you something." He handed me a dvd he had burned. "Kristin and I watched it. I think it's...artistic." Then he left, and I looked down at the dvd in my hand, at the handwritten title: Audition.

When people hear this story, people who have seen Audition, they are amazed that Dave and I are still friends. They question my judgment. Sometimes they question whether I should still be friends with Kristin, since she could probably have known, and warned me.

Later that day, after I had watched the movie, Anna came to visit, and I remember her look of concern when she saw my face. "Are you okay?" she asked. Well, no, not really.

Audition might not be the scariest movie I have ever seen, but it definitely belongs on a short list of the most disturbing. Audition sneaks up on you (I can only speculate, but I suspect this would be true even if you knew its reputation beforehand), because the story is so ordinary, and then suddenly, without warning, extraordinary.

I don't really mean to talk about Audition, but the truth is that having seen a few (maybe half a dozen) of his myriad films, I still always think of Audition as the Miike yard stick, because Audition does so well what it sets out to do, which is cause anxiety.

Sukiyaki Western Django does not aim to disturb. It belongs somewhere in the family of genre-exploding films, playing on the themes of B-westerns, but very much in the Tarantino mold* (as opposed to, say, the Kurasawa mold, or the Coen bros). This sort of film (Kill Bill, Death Proof), smirkingly points out that what we are dealing with is a traditional form, and leaves it at that. After watching these movies, a person doesn't come away with the sense that something has been said about that tradition (in this case, the western). If you love westerns, it is probably entertaining enough to recognize the homages and roll with the formula, and allow the movie to make up in style what it lacks in substance.

I guess Sukiyaki Western Django does what it sets out to do. I'm just not sure that what it sets out to do is all that interesting.

*and with his participation, including a quite hard to watch recurring cameo