Theorem Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1968

From Time Out Film Guide

In Theorem, Pasolini achieved his most perfect fusion of Marxism and religion with a film that is both political allegory and mystical fable. Terence Stamp plays the mysterious Christ or Devil figure who stays briefly with a wealthy Italian family, seducing them one by one. He then goes as quickly as he had come, leaving their whole life-pattern in ruins. What would be pretentious and strained in the hands of most directors, with Pasolini takes on an intense air of magical revelation. In fact, the superficially improbable plot retains all the logic and certainty of a detective story. With bizarre appropriateness, it was one of the last films made by Stamp before he virtually disappeared from the international film scene for some years.

Author: DP

A torinói ló/ The Turin Horse (2011)

I was recommended to see this film by my Hungarian teacher. We were looking at some Hungarian poetry, by Joszef Atilla, which was extremely sad, to do with loss and emotional poverty.

This film is definitely depressing. There is hardly any dialogue, and it is basically just 6 days in the life of a man, his daughter and his horse. They live in an extremely windy and cold sparsely occupied area of the country. Every day is much the same as the last. One of my favourite parts was watching the father and daughter eating one boiled potato a day, peeling the skin off the hot potato with their fingers, the noise of this action is so desperate and resonant, wet, as they eat in absolute silence, so hungry, but also their dire situation of poverty meaning they wolf some of the potato down, then suddenly lose their appetite and push the plate away.

Every day, the daughter goes out to the well to get the water for the day. With the water she washes and boils the potatoes. On the sixth day, the well is dry, and one of the last scenes is of the father and daughter sitting down to the regular potato dinner. The father bites into it and it sounds like an apple. The film drags you down to the depths of despair, although at no part does it drag. The silences, as the daughter dresses her father daily (he has one paralysed arm) are palpable, as he stares at her while she dutifully but heartlessly dresses him each day.

When they are not eating or dressing, they sit looking out the window or the daughter is looking after the horse. The old horse's health seems to deteriorate with each day. By the sixth day, the horse won't eat or drink. The well is dry, and the horse, their livelihood, is nearly dead. The film ends here.

146 min - Drama - 31 March 2011 (Hungary)

1889. German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche witnessed the whipping of a horse while traveling in Turin, Italy. He tossed his arms around the horse's neck to protect it then collapsed to the ground. In less than one month, Nietzsche would be diagnosed with a serious mental illness that would make him bed-ridden and speechless for the next eleven years until his death. But whatever did happen to the horse? This film, which is Tarr's last, follows up this question in a fictionalized story of what occurred. The man who whipped the horse is a rural farmer who makes his living taking on carting jobs into the city with his horse-drawn cart. The horse is old and in very poor health, but does its best to obey its master's commands. The farmer and his daughter must come to the understanding that it will be unable to go on sustaining their livelihoods. The dying of the horse is the foundation of this tragic tale. Written by Anonymous

Norman Bates: You know what I think? I think that we're all in our private traps, clamped in them, and none of us can ever get out. We scratch and we claw, but only at the air, only at each other, and for all of it, we never budge an inch.
Marion Crane: Sometimes, we deliberately step into those traps.

Better Things

the photography and the silences in this film make you forget to breathe. all the colours are so sombre and reflect the bleakness of the story.

HAPPY-GO-LUCKY

Manohla Dargis of the New York Times called the film "so closely tuned to the pulse of communal life, to the rhythms of how people work, play and struggle together, it captures the larger picture along with the smaller. Like Poppy, the bright focus of this expansive, moving film, Mr. Leigh isn’t one to go it alone. Played by a glorious Sally Hawkins — a gurgling, burbling stream of gasps, giggles and words — Poppy . . . keeps moving forward and dancing and jumping and laughing and nodding her dark, delicate head as if she were agreeing not just with this or that friend but also with life itself. She’s altogether charming or perhaps maddening — much depends on whether you wear rose-colored specs — recognizably human and every inch a calculated work of art."

unmade beds, the film.

the warriors... what?

Michael Beck (Swan): Director Hill said that the studio forced him to veer from Yurick's ethnically righteous novel and cast a white actor as Swan. If Swan had to be a white guy, Beck turned out to a four-alarm cream-dream of a choice. Whether it's having the balls to stand up to a power-hungry Ajax or the speed with which he lays the pimp hand down on Deborah Van Valkenberg's Mercy, Beck was armed with enough bitch-slap in his holster for everyone. It might seem strange to anyone who witnesses Beck's powerful presence in The Warriors, but his best post-Warriorswork was in dramatic TV-movies. One would think Beck might have been able to write his own ticket after this star-making turn, but as to the fickle finger of script-choosing, Mike said it best himself: "The Warriors opened up a lot of doors for me. ThenXanadu closed them."

And also.... nipples.

Deborah Van Valkenberg (Mercy):

Equal parts slut and saint, Deb played up every teenage boy's sick dream-girl fantasy to the hilt in her movie debut. Though she got her start in the Broadway production of Hair, we all know her as Ted Knight's brunette daughter on Too Close for Comfort. Though Mercy's introduction to us in The Warriors is as subtle as Jm J. Bullock's line readings on Comfort, it's impossible to take your eyes off Deborah as she slowly chips away at Swan's (and our) defenses. Talk about an upgrade from whoring around with the Orphans! This talented actress dropped off the big screen for a while, concentrating instead on challe

nging TV roles. But her fortunes turned around thanks to charming, indie comedies like Free Enterprise and Chasing Destiny. Hey, if you were gonna resurrect your career, wouldn't you start with roles opposite Bill Shatner and Casper Van Dien? Okay, fine. Laugh all you want. But you're gonna have to meet Ted Knight in the afterlife and answer for those jibes—and it will not be pretty! Ted and his heavenly pals may even pull a train on you. Hell, you look like you might even like it.