C.M. Mombourquette added 14 DVDs to his collection: about 2 years ago

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C.M. Mombourquette added 6 DVDs to his collection: about 2 years ago

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C.M. Mombourquette posted a MOVIE REVIEW item: about 2 years ago

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

C.M. Mombourquette updated his STATUS: about 2 years ago

Woo hoo! No more University! Now I can spend hours upon hours rambling on about movies again.

C.M. Mombourquette added a DVD to his collection: over 2 years ago

C.M. Mombourquette posted a BLOG item over 2 years ago

Review: The Poughkeepsie Tapes

Written/directed by: Drew Dowdle, John Dowdle
(2009)
GENRE: Horror/Mockumentary
PLOT - Hundreds of tapes showing murder and torture are left in an abandoned house. Once the police realize they have a mass murderer on their hands, they begin the hunt for the "The Poughkeepsie Killer".

I'm always on the hunt for a good horror film, so when I heard about the premise behind "The Poughkeepsie Tapes" I was intrigued enough to go see it. The film is a mockumentary about a serial killer who recorded every one of his murders. It's set up like a real documentary - there are interviews with police and detectives, cut together with clips from these supposed 'real home videos' of the killer torturing his victims. The videos are the best parts of the film. There is one in particular that has the camera on the victim, and we can see the killer crawling around on the floor behind her wearing a creepy mask. It was creepy as hell, and very well done, but unfortunately everything else about this film pretty much sucks.
The directing and acting only shines in those creepy, fuzzy home videos. The interview and interrogation sections of the "documentary" are atrocious because of the acting and directing. It just felt too staged for me to believe it was real. There are moments when people in the interviews cry, and it just seems forced and fake. Bad acting. Not convinced. There are some shots that don't feel like they would be in a real documentary (for example - bad zoom-ins and weird angles).
So what the hell, Dowdle bros? I know they're somewhat inexperienced as filmmakers but pulling off a convincing fake documentary shouldn't be so difficult. As I said earlier, the main problem here was the acting. I couldn't get into it because I wasn't convinced by it. Lots of people love the shit out of this movie, and there are some genuinely horrifying moments for sure, but these moments are few and far between.
I've heard the Dowdle's are teaming up with M. Night Shyama-dong on an upcoming horror project. That could be promising. They had a great premise with "Poughkeepsie" and some great ideas, but for me they we just executed poorly. Their next one should be better.
6/10

C.M. Mombourquette posted a BLOG item over 2 years ago

Dominant Fantasy

I didn't write this essay, but I posted it anyway because it's a really interesting comparison of Jim Henson's "Labyrinth" and Polanski's "Repulsion".
Enjoy!

Dominant Fantasy: Labyrinth and Repulsion

In 1965 Polish director, Roman Polanski, directed the psychological thriller, Repulsion. One of the main themes of the movie is fantasy: the blurring of fantasy and reality through the protagonist. The film is centered on the mental degeneration of a young girl, Carole. She is a sexually repressed youth and therefore, sees it everywhere. Her fear of men in general leads to her inevitable mental breakdown—the result of which is the death of two men. Carole’s sordid fantasies play a consuming role in her life. She is a passive figure and eventually is completely consumed by her fantasies, unable to conform to her society’s standards. Twenty-one years later, Jim Henson directed the film Labyrinth in 1986. Though Labyrinth is a very different movie, the themes are surprisingly similar. It is a coming of age story featuring another young girl, Sarah. Sarah also lives in a dream world and it threatens to keep her isolated from the outside world. The threat is so significant that she loses her baby brother to the Goblin King. She must conquer the labyrinth and her fantasies so she may mature and take her place in society. Sarah is an active character, however, and unlike Carole, she does persevere and eventually she takes control of her dreams. Both films are from very different backgrounds, but both focus on fantasy and the necessity to control it if one is to successfully exist in the real world amongst society.
In both films fantasies manifest due to the isolation of the protagonists from the outside world. The time they spend alone impairs their relationships with other people. Labyrinth opens with Sarah, alone, in the park. She is acting out her favourite play. Unfortunately, the result of this solitude is that she is late for babysitting her younger brother and a row begins between her and her stepmother. Her isolated lifestyle cuts into her responsibilities and hurts her relationships with her family. When she does speak to her father, it is through the closed door of her bedroom. She is locked inside herself, lost in her own daydreams of acting and adventure. The camera pans around the room, showing her childlike sanctuary. It is cluttered with children’s toys, dolls and books. There is no evidence that Sarah has any friends or connections outside of her house. The only friends she makes are in the Labyrinth—part of her subconscious.
Carole is a Belgian living in London with her sister, Helene. Helene is the only connection she has to home. When Helene starts dating a married man (Michael), Carole seems to interpret it as a threat to her sibling relationship. Carole rejects any sort of bond she may form with this man, despite his attempts to befriend her. This intrusion marks the noticeable beginning of her distrust of men. A solitary girl to begin with, she does not have any friends and does not talk to anyone except the women at work, who find her strange and foreign. There is one man who pursues her throughout the film, but she cannot connect with him. Whenever the two talk there is usually glass or a wall between them. Carole’s introverted tendencies, like Sarah, injure the possibility she has to successfully fit in with society. Without human connection, Carole becomes more and more introverted. Her sister is whisked away to Italy for a vacation with Michael and Carole is left completely alone. Her sister’s absence drives Carole to complete seclusion and she remains for the rest of the film locked in her apartment.
The mise-en-scene of Labyrinth and Repulsion show the state of mind that Sarah and Carole have. The walls of Sarah’s bedroom play host to a multitude of posters and paintings. One, beside her medieval-like four-poster bed, is a copy of Escher’s “Relativity”. It is the inspiration of the final battle scene in which Sarah stands against the mighty Goblin King, master of dreams, to win her freedom. A giant room of distorted reality, this scene has staircases that lead no where, jigsaw puzzle walls and no appreciation for the law of gravity. This poster is placed beside the bed where Sarah dreams. The painting is a confusing one with no direction. Sarah’s dreams are confusing her reality—she does not know where to go and what to do in order to grow up. She is stuck between childhood and adulthood, clinging to her past and eager for the future. The room in which she faces the Goblin King is equally confusing as this is when she is met with the greatest of temptations the entire Labyrinth has challenged her with: her dreams. Sarah must find direction in all this chaos if she is to win her fight and go home—if she is to grow up or not.
Carole spends most of the film in her apartment. As time passes, it morphs into a disgusting state of disarray. Potatoes remain in the kitchen growing wrinkled and moldy. She often stares at the ruined vegetables, but makes no move to throw them away. She distractedly places an uncooked rabbit on a table where it lays for the rest of the film, rotting. The degenerating food is symbolic of her degenerating mental health. As maggots fester on the rabbit carcass, the demons in Carole’s mind also fester. Another apparent example of Carole’s mental anxiety is repetitive imagery of cracks. When Michael stays the night for the first time in the film, Carole notices a crack by the vent in the kitchen wall. She mentions how they “must fix that crack” and her sister only reacts confusedly. A few scenes later, Carole is walking home from work and distracted by a large crack in the sidewalk. She sits, unable to continue onward, and stares at the crack for several minutes. This is an expression of Carole’s passivity. It foreshadows the fact that she will allow the cracks in her mind to not let her move forward and beyond her fears as Sarah does in the Labyrinth. Carole has paranoia—a fear of what she knows breaking down, dissolving into nothingness and bringing her with it. Instead of fighting her fears, she lets them hold her and consume her. Her rape fantasies become more frequent as the cracks in her apartment get larger and more dangerous.
Sarah is an active character. She is constantly aware of what is going on around her. Though she was very solitary and full of fantasy, the threat of her brother being turned into a goblin drives her to action. Because something important to her is at stake, she must leave the confines of her sanctuary and conquer the labyrinth. Sarah is always moving, always walking and exploring. She physically fights her demons in order to obtain her baby brother. She always knows that she must continue on her journey no matter what obstacles are thrown her way. For example, when she is locked away in the Goblin King’s oubliette, she uses what she has in order to further herself in finding the castle at the center of the labyrinth. The trinkets she used to use for dress up become currency. When she needs help from the groundskeeper, Hoggle, she gives him a plastic bracelet in exchange for a guide. When she asks for advice from an elderly man, she gives him a ring as thanks. Each trinket she sheds is like an aspect of childhood she has abandoned. To win her brother back, she must conquer her fantasies. She must control them. And that is the only way she will grow up.
Carole is not an active character in any way. She spends most of the film locked in her apartment. She fights nothing and conquers nothing and gets nothing done. Untouched food rots in her kitchen. She leaves clothes where she throws them and often stares, mid-thought, for several minutes. She is daydreaming at one point and forgets she has left the bath running until it has overflowed. She never does drain the tub. Carole is never aware of what is going on in her and her passivity allows her rape fantasies to completely consume her. She will never be able to live normally among society because she cannot control herself. When she is faced with the outside world, she rejects it. She disposes of Michael’s toothbrush as it “doesn’t belong” in her bathroom. When Colin tries to enter her apartment because he is worried about her well being, she beats him to death with a candlestick and lays his body in the still-full bathtub. The only action that Carole ever does is murder two men. She does this because by the time people from the outside world try to help her, her ideas about invasion have already manifested to a maximum level.
Interestingly enough, though these two films have only their themes in common, there is one other connecting point. Each film has a scene with a hallway of hands. At one point Sarah attempts to outwit the labyrinth, but ends up falling down a trap door and down a shaft of hands. Screenplay writer Terry Jones “had this idea of these hands where they all come out and all grab her” (Documentary). In Repulsion, near the end of the film and therefore well into Carole’s insanity trip, she imagines that her hallway is full of hands. They are all coming out of the walls and groping her, keeping her from reaching the end of the hall. Both cases of hands showcase the strength of each girl. Sarah has fallen down a shaft of hands because the Goblin King is trying to hinder her from making progress in the labyrinth. All of “the puppeteers had to wear latex gloves, designed to look like gnarled arthritic hands” (J. Henson Documentary). They are a frightening part of the labyrinth walls, holding her steadily in place. Sarah takes her chances with the drop below her and says she wants to go down. She ends up in the Oubliette, but from there she battles on. The hands are a test of her resolution. She is determined, however, and makes her way through it, virtually unscathed. Carole, the angel of passivity, reacts to her hallway of hands differently. She simply looks terrified and eventually falls to the floor to be overtaken by flesh-grabbing fingers. Carole is too far-gone down the road of insanity to be able to fight off the hands or her rape fantasies.
Sarah journeys through the Labyrinth to save her baby brother from the Goblin King. The “whole trip through the labyrinth is like a voyage. And so to create the feeling of a voyage you have to go through many different places” (J. Henson, Documentary). The labyrinth is Sarah’s subconscious. She journey’s through it because if she does not, she will lose her family relationships and sacrifice her place in society. Carole does not have the direction that Sarah has. While Sarah physically journeys through her problems, Carole lays back and lets herself be attacked from all sides. She does not shake off her fears and go see a Chaplin movie, instead she secludes herself in fear of the outside world. Both films display a necessity to control one’s self. If one allows one’s dreams to overtake one’s life, then there is no possibility of living. Sarah overcomes her daydreams and grows up. She attaches herself to her family again and continues to daydream when she has the time. She has reached a happy medium that Carole never reaches. Carole is left in the end as a comatose shell of who she was because she can not exert control over herself or the influences the world has on her. Action, decision and a balance of dreams and reality are necessary to flourish in life.

-E. Wagner

C.M. Mombourquette added a DVD to his collection: over 2 years ago

C.M. Mombourquette added 2 DVDs to his collection: over 2 years ago

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The Best Works of Roman Polanski - "Rosemary's Baby"

In light of all the recent Polanski buzz, I've decided to share my thoughts on one of my favorite films of his - 'Rosemary's Baby'. Think what you will about his personal fuck-ups, the man is still a genius. "Knife in the Water', "Repulsion", and "Death and the Maiden" remain to this day some of my favorite all-time films. 'Rosemary's Baby', however, being the first Polanski film I had ever seen, still holds a special place in my heart. I love the shit out of this movie.

'Rosemary's Baby' is a film that explores aspects of human monstrosity and demonic terror, but this is all kept subtle and ambiguous. It remains questionable whether or not there is a plot against Rosemary and her baby or if she is just insane. The demonic terror of the film is introduced in abstract dream sequences, and the human horror is hinted toward, rather than shown. The trick Polanski pulls on his audience is that the horror is introduced discretely and subliminally. He is able to surprise his audience with each scene, because throughout the movie, they don't know what to think. Polanski has created one of the most well constructed, horrifying gothic films ever made because he knew that people are more afraid of what they don't see. This film is comparable to Murnau's Nosferatu and Ridley Scott's Alien in the way suspense and ambiguity are used to get deep inside the mind of the viewer, allowing them to imagine the terror for themselves.
Rosemary's Baby is filled with small unsettling oddities which create much of the horror in the film. In one scene, Rosemary is visited by her friend Hutch who is suspicious that her neighbors, (Minnie and Roman Castavet) are witches. He is determined to help her, but their privacy is invaded by Roman, and upon leaving, Hutch discovers that his glove is missing. The horror to this scene is inside the mind of the audience who can suspect that something is wrong, and that something bad might happen to Hutch.
An early dream sequence of Rosemary's hints ironically to the Castavets being witches. It begins with Rosemary in bed, the sound of a clock ticking in the background, then pans to the wall and we see an image of the dead girl who jumped from the Castavets window earlier that night. Suddenly Minnie Castavet's voice is heard, arguing with her husband over the dead girl who was supposed to bear their demon child. The scene shifts to the Castavet's empty apartment with Minnie is dressed as a nun and her husband is dressed as a carpenter. They are putting bricks over the window where the girl jumped, and Minnie goes on to complain about how they have to start over again.
In this dream sequence, Polanski has successfully set up both the horrific and demonic aspects of his film without showing too much or giving anything away. He hints toward these people being witches involved in satanic rituals, but also leaves the audience questioning whether or not it was just a strange dream. Polanski continues to add horrific qualities to the Castavet characters - they start to intrude more into Rosemary's life and befriend her husband, eventually convincing him to offer them Rosemary's womb in exchange for wealth and fame.
After being drugged by the Castavets, Rosemary is helpless but semi-conscious during the ritualistic rape scene. The fact that she is half conscious and dreaming adds to the ambiguity of this sequence, still leaving the audience to wonder whether or not it's really happening. The scene begins with Rosemary in bed, floating alone in the ocean, then on a boat, with Mr. Castavet as the captain, pointing and giving direction. It shifts back and forth from her bedroom to the boat. Her husband takes off her clothes, binds her legs, pulls the wedding ring from her finger. Back on the boat, Rosemary is instructed to go down in the cabin - she enters a room with a bed, and finds the Castavets there with their friends all standing nude around a bed chanting and waiting for her. Her husband emerges from the circle of witches and as his face gets closer to the camera it is covered with darkness. Then his face appears again, but more sinister this time - dirty and menacing, almost demonic. Following this is a shot of his dirty hands, scraping her skin all the way down her body, then a cut to more hideous, charred, beast-like hands, doing the same thing.
This part of the scene displays the monstrous alchemy of her husband as surrenders to his greed and gives his wife to dark forces, just to have the luxurious life he wants. It is brilliantly constructed because it seems like it could just be her husband, forcing himself on Rosemary while she hallucinates. The next morning, Rosemary is horrified by the scratches on her skin and her husband playfully confesses to having forced himself on her while she was unconscious. It is unclear both to Rosemary and to the audience whether or not he is lying. From that point on, the audience builds a unity with Rosemary in that we know as little as she does. Whatever Rosemary discovers, we discover along with her. Polanski was careful not to reveal any truths until Rosemary finds those truths on her own. The audience waits with her in suspense as she unravels all the clues and it isn't until the very end (when Rosemary sees the truth for herself) that we are finally shown the real truth.
The ending to this film is truly uncanny.
Rosemary wakes up and her baby is gone. Guy tells her that it died, but Rosemary doesn't believe him. She acquires enough hints after hearing a baby cry next door, and being drained of breast milk by her 'nurse' - a friend of the Castavets. Rosemary discovers the secret door in the closet that leads into the Castavet's apartment and the camera stays behind her as she slowly makes her way down the hallway. She takes time to look at the demonic paintings on the wall that were not there before, further building up suspense. As she finally moves to the living room, we see the Castavets and various obscure characters from throughout the film but they are all different. Even her husband Guy has this new monstrous quality about him that wasn't there before. We finally see the Castavets in their element, acting naturally amongst their fellow witches. There is a new layer of darkness draped on all these characters. After watching everyone in the room yell 'Hail Satan', any idea or notion of these people being normal is lost. The music is also a key element to the unsettling feeling when watching this scene. It is wailing and haunting, creating a dizzying effect. The intense, bizarre, camera movement spins out of control and adds to the uncanny effect Polanski was trying to achieve.
After Rosemary settles down and asks to rock her baby, Roman Castavet encourages it and we can tell that he is excited by the idea of Rosemary accepting her child. She approaches the cradle, draped in black cloth and an upside down cross hanging from the top. We never actually see the baby - another part of Polanski's genius. All that we see of the baby is the same flash of yellow eyes and dark skin we saw during the rape scene. She rocks her baby, and we can see in her face that she is almost accepting her fate as the mother of this child. She has just met all of these people for the first time. The Castavets, her husband, and her doctor are no longer the people she thought they were. They have all become monsters. And as Polanski suggests with the ambiguous ending, Rosemary may have no other choice but to surrender to the coven and become a monster herself.
By the end of this subliminal, off-beat film, we feel dizzy and horrified yet entranced and intrigued. Part of what makes this such a unique film experience is that we follow Rosemary for much of the film. We feel the way she feels in the end - cheated, betrayed, confused and helpless. The film is unpredictable because of the way it was directed. If Polanski had filmed the rape scene in a more literal way, we would never question Rosemary's sanity and we would know the outcome before she does. The horror and terror in the film is subtle and fleeting until the very end. Polanski disguises the characters in the film just as well as he disguises the film itself - a horror film masked as a soap opera about a hysterical pregnant woman. It is for that reason that this film is an important addition to the horror genre - Polanski shows us something terrifying, but reveals it to us subliminally. The best horror movies are the ones that allow us enough space to imagine our own version of the nightmare, then surprising us when the monster finally steps out of the darkness and reveals itself.

C.M. Mombourquette posted an IMAGE item: over 2 years ago

C.M. Mombourquette posted an IMAGE item: over 2 years ago

C.M. Mombourquette posted an IMAGE item: over 2 years ago

C.M. Mombourquette posted a VIDEO item: over 2 years ago

POPCORNISH: The Best Film Director of All Time!

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8pBbS4dDsQ

C.M. Mombourquette at 03:27 PM Sep 28

This is my parody of pretentious, untalented film directors. It's a little long, but if you've never seen a man masturbate to Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal", skip to 3:05 and enjoy!

C.M. Mombourquette added 22 DVDs to his collection: over 2 years ago

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