Cinema Club #14 (December, 2023)
Our last Cinema Club of the year is all about haunts and nourishments.
Alisha’s November Recommendations
MOST HAUNTING WATCHES OF THE YEAR — This was a great big year, full of great big beautiful movies. Here is a list of some of the year’s films that I keep thinking about, endlessly.
BEAUTIFUL BEINGS (2022)
When I wrote a review of this film, I spoke to its resonant ache. It follows a group of teenage boys who grow through a pivotal friendship, which sounds simple enough. But growth is never simple, as this film shows. It’s full of horrors and the most beautiful moments, containing a kind of naivete and hopefulness alongside fear that are all infectious. This is a film that has been haunting me all year, in the best way.
V/H/S/85 (2023)
The latest addition to the found footage anthology series takes place in the ‘80s, and it is not at all what you might be expecting. V/H/S/85 is one of the series’ better achievements for how it carries its stories, which here seem to be in conversation with each other more meaningfully than through simple theme, something the choppy V/H/S/94 was guilty of. It’s creepy, violent, deft, and smart. Watch to find out why.
HELL HOUSE LLC ORIGINS: THE CARMICHAEL MANOR (2023)
The final addition to the found footage series that has truly snuck up on audiences in the best way, The Carmichael Manor is a crowning achievement. Taking the old-school horror of the first three films, and placing it within an environment of austere wealth, this film will have you covering your eyes for its subtle frights and sinister, lingering ghosts.
JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4 (2023)
When I watched this film earlier this year, I was left feeling as though Keanu Reeves wasn’t given enough time, I felt as though something about it, about him, was rushed. But the more I think about it, the more I feel as though this lack of time is part and parcel of the point. There’s something so tired about Reeves’ Wick here, a kind of fatigue that Reeves portrays stunningly and so delicately; it’s as though it were an imperceptible ghost clinging to him that only slowly becomes weighty. This creeping tiredness that Reeves slowly reveals is what has come to increasingly dawn on me, it is what makes this film a lingering achievement.
Veronica’s December Recommendations
GIRL DINNER — Death to Girl Dinner being a measly few pickles and a piece of salami on a little plate! Girl Dinner is about decadent consumption—of food, perhaps, but also in the spiritual sense. Girl Dinner is giving into the urge to be swallowed whole, or to swallow someone whole yourself. Girl Dinner is to let oneself be lovingly tended to through nourishment, or to lovingly tend to another by nourishing them.
DEEP TISSUE (2019)
Meredith Alloway’s quick and squicky short film can be nibbled on as an amuse-bouche to precede one of the Girl Dinner feasts below. Viv (Meredith Alloway) welcomes a masseuse into her hotel room who offers a distinct, gory, and perhaps cathartic type of “happy ending”. Visceral, nasty, simple, and sexy, Deep Tissue is a contained little reflection on pain, pleasure, and consumption.
RAW (2016)
Julia Ducournau’s debut feature follows new university student and previously staunch vegetarian Justine (Garance Marillier) as she devolves into cannibalism after tasting raw meat during a hazing. Justine’s descent into a life of consuming flesh is a fairly distinct allegory for young womanhood, one that asks if the longing to give in to excessive, decadent, nasty consumption of our yearnings is something that can ever be fully repressed. Raw’s ending is a particularly striking one, suggesting that perhaps giving into these passionate desires need not be totally cowed.
BABETTE’S FEAST (1987)
When highly skilled cook Babette (Stéphane Audran) wins the lottery, she chooses to spend her fortune on concocting the highest possible quality French meal for the two adult sisters she works for and the members of their community. The film follows the feast’s conception and journey from accessing the ingredients, to careful preparation, to the sense of almost transcendent intimacy fostered at the table by the people consuming a meal so divine. Babette’s Feast feels practically worshipful toward the magic found in loving cooking.
BIG NIGHT (1996)
Big Night suggests a very important hypothesis: that perhaps the best Girl Dinners are perhaps the ones not prepped by girls at all, but prepped by doting, handsome Italian men. In Big Night, brothers Secondo (Stanley Tucci) and Primo (Tony Shaloub) are desperate to save their underappreciated authentic Italian restaurant located in New Jersey. An opportunity to create some buzz at their restaurant with a celebrity appearance quickly becomes a night of bubbling familial tensions and one too many girlfriends in the kitchen, though all is moved through with a certain sincerity and grace thanks to a supremely delicious meal.
PHANTOM THREAD (2017)
Alma (Vicky Krieps) is swept up into the world of renowned dressmaker Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis). Reynolds’ world at first seems to be all delicious glamor, but Alma soon discovers that the man’s creative genius comes at the cost of fastidious pickiness—down to the way Alma spreads butter and the runnyness of his eggs. Instead of cowing to it like the rest of Reynolds entourage, Alma takes matters into her own hands and finds a culinary shortcut that leaves Reynolds feeble and dependent, incapable of remaining entrenched in the minutia of his life and forced to accept care, if only fleetingly.