Some films I liked lately
Journey to the Shore
Watched on MUBI and it’s pretty different to the two other Kiyoshi Kurosawa films I’ve seen (and possibly actually my favourite), with the bleak horror replaced with a magical realist approach to the ghost story that I really liked – the way that ghosts exist in this film reminds me a bit of the Thanatoids from Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland where it’s simply that they’re sort of dead and they’re sort of alive. The whole film had a strange dreamlike feel to it – I’d had a dream a few days before watching about hanging out with a friend of mine who died a long time ago, and I loved that the film carried that strange sense of calmness at meeting this person again combined with melancholy at the knowledge that something is wrong and that it can’t last.
Hush
Partly watched this in prep for Bly Manor (same director, yer Mickey Flanagan) and cause it’s pretty short. Reminds me a massive lot of what A Quiet Place did, but more focused on that single location and its own single weird situation, which I liked. Sound design were fooking immense, so I was pretty cheery within the first five mins. If you want to win me over, show food preparation and pair it with METICULOUSLY detailed sound design. The rest of the film could be utter bolix and I’d still be chuffed about that.
