Hello everyone and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. As summer comes to an end, I’m finally catching up on its slew of big-name titles, starting with the highly anticipated The Witches of Mongolia . The show has proven to be an absolute delight so far, continuing the thread of sharp, intimate historical drama that began with The Tale of the Yamada Heike and complementing her mastery of melancholy with plenty of wit and courtly intrigue. Seeing one of my favorite directors expand her tonal and narrative palette while still embodying all the compositional sophistication and attention to character is definitely the first time I’ve been dazzled by her attention in her work. This is an incredible evolution of K-On! At this point, I am very grateful to Science Saru for proving her talent to be a reliable partner. I’ll probably have more to say about this soon (even though this is only “Season 2”), but for now, let’s recap this week!
First up this week is WodarakIt is the latest French work directed by Adrian Beau, adapted from AK Tolstoy’s novella. The film tells the story of a marquis who finds himself lost in the demon-infested forests of Eastern Europe and ends up taking refuge in the home of a man named Gorcha. Gorcha’s children received a cold and superstitious welcome, but he himself was even worse. Returning home after taking revenge on the Turks who burned his village, he appears to be transformed into a living corpse, a sinister, life-sucking Voldarak.
I thoroughly enjoyed this story’s previous adaptation as a segment from Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath , but that in no way prepared me for the insane fun that this movie would be. Even before Gorcha appears, Beau delivers a portrait of gothic fetish that is both claustrophobic and overwhelming, establishing the Marquis as a man with zany, absurd manners that contrasts with the bluntness of Gorcha’s children and painting each family member a rich, unique color. They had all the mutual affection and trust of a lovely hereditary home, dabbled in arcane rituals, and hinted at powers far beyond the staid marquis’ comprehension.
When Gorcha comes, God. The family patriarch is depicted as a loving, richly detailed puppet, a pale skeleton with piercing bulbous eyes that his first son somehow fails to recognize as the monster he is. It’s distraught to watch this creature reintegrate into our families, as if we were trapped at the dinner table with our lips sewn shut, unable to tell the danger of its bony hands grazing their cheeks. Beau himself does an excellent job voicing this monstrous creature, leading us toward the inevitable violence, appending the brooding grandeur of Bram Stoker’s Dracula with punctuation of blood and the sordid simplicity of lustful passion. You can appreciate this film’s feast from a class or gender perspective, languishing blissfully in its dreamlike digressions, or simply appreciate the amusing contrast between the ill-equipped Marquis and his gracious yet formidable master. No matter how you look at it, this is a great debut and has me looking forward to Beau’s next performances.
Then we checked watership fallsan animated adaptation of the novel by Richard Adams. The film centers on a group of rabbits led by the plucky Hazel, who leave their rabbit hutch after Hazel’s brother Fiver witnesses an apocalyptic scene. Their exodus takes them over mountains and dales until they must eventually face off against the maniacal leader of a distant warren to secure the future for their furry companions.
An exhilaratingly intimate adaptation of one of the most brutal rabbit-centric adventure stories I’ve ever seen, Watership Down captures all the horror and violence of the original story and brings it to life with grounded, realistic character animation and a rich portrait of England’s eco-dead countryside. The film makes the scale of this adventure truly terrifying. When we put our perspective on the rabbit, it becomes immediately clear that every open field is an Odyssey-sized adventure, and that every uncovered patch of land invites hostile predators.
Violence comes quickly and without warning; a careless trek past the cover of cornstalks may signal a hungry hawk, and any safety seem It’s almost certainly too good to be true. Just like the book, the film presents a variety of challenges so that the journey never feels monotonous or frustratingly bleak, and although some members of the team fade into the background, you still get a fair impression of the key figures who define their little fellowship. The story is one of the most compelling and compelling in any medium, and the film is a great vehicle for teaching children about the world’s indifference to our suffering.
Next, my roommate’s reckless Tubi trawling got us surf ninjaa ’93 artifact that looks and feels like a made-for-TV Disney movie. The plot involves two surfer teenagers living in Los Angeles who soon learn after a sudden ninja attack that they are actually the lost princes of the remote island kingdom of Patusan. The brothers will be forced to square off and compete for the inheritance, along with their new guardian and old friend Rob Schneider.
The film’s plot is almost non-existent, and Rob Schneider’s presence often makes the scenes borderline unbearable, but “Surf Ninja” surprisingly possesses a pair of redeeming virtues: Ernie Reyes Jr. and Reyes Sr., a talented martial arts father-and-son duo, star in the leads, and Leslie Nielsen does his best to provide the pair with some real physical comedy as their unlikely adversaries. It’s a harmless but completely skippable time capsule from the moment when the cultural penetration of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was at its peak and we also got Rob Schneider in the movie for some fucking reason.
The last time this week is Destructive inventiona loose ’58 adaptation of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Lubor Tokos plays Simon Hart, an assistant to a famous scientist who is captured along with him by pirates working for the evil Count Artigas. After returning to Artigas’ secret island lair, the two are tasked with mastering the Professor’s theorized new form of energy, which Artigas intends to use as a superweapon. Determined to thwart Artigas’ ambitions, Hart embarks on a valiant attempt to warn the world of his threat and escape his malevolent clutches.
The Invention of Destruction is a stunning inventive reimagining of Verne’s story, presenting the exotic landscapes and bizarre inventions of Verne’s world as carefully drafted illustrations in keeping with the film’s human actors. The Invention of Destruction combines such backgrounds, stop-motion animation, and animated light projections of the ocean floor to bring Verne’s ideas to life in a way I’ve never seen before, calling to mind the German Expressionist artist’s rare and impressive flourishes, as well as the mixed-media underwater world of Wes Anderson’s Life Aquatic.
The effect is haunting and mesmerizing, presenting an aesthetic feast whose adventurous ambition is not limited by any context or scale; mediated by black-and-white photography, the visual dissonance quickly fades into memory until you wonder why so many other films No With such great innovation. In addition to being an aesthetic marvel, the film does one of the best jobs I’ve ever seen of twisting 20,000 Leagues into a propulsive, audience-friendly shell of an adventure, adapting what would have been a Nemo-led episodic travelogue into an intense conflict between the professor’s assistant and the evil pirates who captured and exploited his mentor. The Invention of Destruction, with its stunning visual variety and confidence in narrative reorganization, I would recommend this film to anyone interested in the visual scope of cinema.
