Newsletter: Indie Focus: The ravishing images of ‘Crimson Peak’ and ‘The Assassin’
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Hello! I’m Mark Olsen, and welcome to your weekly field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.
We talk a lot here about our screening series and the Q&As with cast and filmmakers after the movie. What I enjoy most about them is that you never quite know what’s going to happen. Take, for example, last week’s Q&A following the film “Manson Family Vacation” with director J. Davis, actor and executive producer Jay Duplass and actor Linas Phillips. The film is a surprisingly heartfelt comedy about two estranged brothers in which one of them discovers his biological father is Charles Manson.
The conversation was the kind I like best, entertaining and insightful, as the trio talked candidly about what to do with an odd little movie in today’s media landscape. The movie is currently available on digital platforms and we’ll have a podcast posted soon.
The Envelope Screening Series and Envelope Independent Screening Series are also ramping up. You can find out more at events.latimes.com
Right now we have two Indie Focus Screening Series events booked for November, with the French submission for the foreign language film Oscar, “Mustang,” and Sundance award winner “James White.” Keep an eye out here for RSVP info: events.latimes.com/indiefocus/
You can listen to our recent podcast series here.
‘Crimson Peak’
The new film by director Guillermo del Toro features ravishing visuals and an earnestly straight-faced ghost tale, a Gothic romance set at the turn of the last century in which a young American heiress (Mia Wasikowska) is wooed by a dashing, titled Englishman (Thomas Hiddleston) and whisked away to his crumbling estate to live alongside his jealous sister (Jessica Chastain).
Mia Wasikowska as Edith Cushing in “Crimson Peak.”
Mia Wasikowska as Edith Cushing in "Crimson Peak." (Kerry Hayes/Universal Pictures / Legendary Pictures)
Critic Kenneth Turan wrote that “‘Crimson Peak’ is filled with many marvels, its bravura, show-stopping visuals not the least among them. In fact, the film contains so many good things it's something of a shock to realize that it hasn't ended up completely satisfying."
Turan added, “Del Toro has a gift for visual imagination that few filmmakers can match.”
Our Hero Complex honcho Meredith Woerner visited the set of "Crimson Peak" on a soundstage outside Toronto, taking in the three-story impressive construction with a working elevator.
"Visually, I wanted a house that you could enter and get a sense of the whole house in a single shot," Del Toro said. "You immediately know the geography of the house. You immediately know the library's in the front, the kitchen is on the right, the bedroom is on the left. We needed to make it geographically very clear so that you are never lost in a movie set. You feel that you're in a real place. That you know where things are."
As it’s the season, I wrote an essay on recent horror films and the elasticity of the genre, how “Anything can be horror and horror can be made from anything. Recently filmmakers have especially reveled in cross-pollinating between genres and creating horror, or tinges of it, from the unlikeliest of places.” The essay includes “Crimson Peak,” but also references such films as “It Follows,” “The Babadook,” “The Invitation,” “The Final Girls” and “The Witch.”
‘The Assassin’
Scene from “The Assassin.”
Scene from "The Assassin." (Well Go USA Entertainment)
I was quite pleased to be asked to review “The Assassin,” the new film by Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien.
As I put it in my review: “Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien is considered one of the world's greatest among the cognoscenti of the international festival circuit, though he remains largely unknown even to art-house audiences in the United States. His new film, ‘The Assassin,’ his first feature in eight years, should go some way to changing that.
“Combining Hou's patient, observant style with a historical martial arts tale, the film is a fascinating hybrid of craft, genre and story. Beautiful to look at and with deeply felt emotions, the film has a meditative aura punctured by sharp bouts of fighting.”
My favorite review of the film remains one of the very first, written by Justin Chang for Variety from the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. He called the film “a mesmerizing slow burn of a martial-arts movie that boldly merges stasis and kinesis, turns momentum into abstraction, and achieves breathtaking new heights of compositional elegance: Shot for shot, it’s perhaps the most ravishingly beautiful film Hou has ever made, and certainly one of his most deeply transporting.”
Hou was recently in Los Angeles to promote the film and made an appearance at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for a Q&A with his longtime cinematographer Mark Lee Ping Bing moderated by critic John Powers.
‘Truth’
Last week I also reviewed the movie “Truth,” adapted and directed by James Vanderbilt to tell the story of the 2004 television news report about the military service of George W. Bush that came under immediate and intense scrutiny, leading to the firing of CBS News producer Mary Mapes and the resignation of Dan Rather. The movie is based on Mapes' memoir.
Robert Redford as Dan Rather, Cate Blanchett as Mary Mapes and Bruce Greenwood as Andrew Heyward in “Truth.”
Robert Redford as Dan Rather, Cate Blanchett as Mary Mapes and Bruce Greenwood as Andrew Heyward in "Truth." (Lisa Tomasetti / Sony Pictures)
As I wrote, “ 'Truth' is a movie curiously in conflict with itself. There is a constant shift between granular detail and big-picture sweep that the movie never fully resolves, as serious discussions of type fonts and spacing between lines and letters on the military documents fit awkwardly with musings on what-it-all-means.”
The performances make the movie, as the story “all might be a bit dry were it not for the sparkling performances by Cate Blanchett as Mapes and Robert Redford as Rather, who provide two distinct approaches on movie-star dynamics. Blanchett attacks her role while Redford lets it come to him.”
I was at the world premiere of the film during the Toronto International Film Festival. Rather was there and spoke after the film, saying, “My hope for the film is that it doesn’t end a chapter, that it opens a new chapter, about how we journalists -- and therefore the consumers of news -- can get quality journalism with integrity in the new digital age. It takes passion, and if you don’t burn with a hot, hard flame to do it, then think twice about getting into it.”
'Ladies of the '80s'
Anyone looking to take in a few scary movies during Halloween season would be well-advised to check out the series “Ladies of the '80s: A Decade of Horror Directed by Women” put on next weekend by the Heavy Midnights crew at Cinefamily. Anyone who thinks that horror films are either a) irredeemable junk or b) thinly veiled sexist male fantasies will be pleasantly surprised by the feminist subversion of these movies.
Mary Lambert’s “Pet Sematary” and Roberta Findlay’s “The Oracle” will be featured Oct. 23. Screening on Oct. 24 are Barbara Peeters’ “Humanoids From the Deep,” Amy Holden Jones’ “The Slumber Party Massacre,” Carol Frank’s “Sorority House Massacre” and Katt Shea’s “Stripped to Kill.” Set for Oct. 25 are Jackie Kong’s “Blood Diner” and Genie Joseph, Thomas Doran and Brendan Faulkner’s “Spookies.”
A trailer for the series is here.
Email me if you have questions, comments or suggestions, and follow me on Twitter @IndieFocus.
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