Mandy
Everybody's talking about it here so I gave it a try. It has that "backwards writing" feel, like they used to say to Argento, that he designed the murder scenes and then wrote a script around it, but in this case seems like the fever/wet dreams of a 80's teenager (or the "not lived nostalgia" of the younger) put in a blender with more artistic mannerisms, and the fact that it can stand as something watchable still is remarkable. Even more, it's enjoyable. It embraces nonsense from the get go and I really like that, the psychdelic images and more art cinema pace of the beggining annoyed me at the start but as the cult was introduced it got quite an interesting mood, that was kind of shattered at the end when it goes full octane but I didn't dislike the change so much to be a problem.
Surprinsingly it's all played quite straight faced for the most time, aside Cage horrible jokes (that I think are intentionally bad)... As much straight faced as an acid drenched cameraman can be at least. I haven't seen BtBR yet but I am intrigued now, because Mandy almost feel like a a marriage between (for lack of better terms) high art (experimental cinema) and low art (exploitation, cheap horror movies) where the approach to it's material is inversed - ridicule treated as sublime and seriousness as a b movie prop. It makes you constantly think about other movies (Evil Dead, italians horror...) and rock/metal/rpg imagerie (album/book covers, etc) and I feel that it doesn't just recycle things but take then to some refreshing conclusion, the kind of movie a 80's teenager would make with the repertoire at hand while taking art classes. It's no masterpiece and most of it's qualities are awful ones in another context but I enjoyed a lot. Don't know how it will age but for now it's good.
And I really liked that sequence where Nic rides a quadricycle thru tunnels and then get stucked on the mud. The way it makes no sense at all, and then the epically camera zooms back a little slowly showing a nice and gratuitious passage just made me crack and sums up the directors M.O.
You Were Never Really There
From the same director of the great We Need to Talk About Kevin (and other two movies I have to seek now) this one is almost as good (or perhaps just as good but more subtle). Downbeat and crude but also with a lot of sensibility and heart.
I started watching The House That Jack Built after this one and just had to turn off after 20 minutes of pretentious bs that was made even bigger by the huge contrast between the two movies. YWNRT never explains too much and relies on the viewer intelligence remarkably while THtJB treats you like a moron and at the same time tricks you into felling smart because you "get" what the "genius director" is doing... I'll tackle THtJB later and probably the same way I endured Antichrist: shit faced drunk and as a comedy (tho the comedy aspect does feel more clear in the 20 minutes I watched).
Plus, I do like Matt Dillon occasionally but after watching Joaquin Phoenix acting on YWNRR... He sounded too forced, tacky, annoying and shallow.
Split
Not my favorite from Shyamalan (a director I like a lot) but it is very good. Second part is not as strong as the first perhaps, even with the Unbreakable linking being very interesting. Rock solid to perfect performances and the director builds tension like a motherfucker when he wants to. Like Lynne Ramsay from YWNRT he can tackle heavy subjects with a lot of sensibility and intelligence, and you never feel like he judges or hates his characters, or use them as sock puppets for his own ego (*coff*cofflarsvontrier*coff*coff), even tho Split is a little more heavy handed than Ramsay and even prior movies from Shyamalan.
