Movies (#SFWApro)

THE SECRET OF ROAN INISH (1994) is John Sayles’ enchanting fantasy, set in post-WW II Ireland. A motherless young woman returns to live with her grandparents on the coast and discovers her supposedly drowned brother is actually living at sea with their selkie (were-seal) kinfolk. She becomes convinced that if she can bring the family back to their island home on Roan Inish, the selkies will return her brother … A wonderful film, with cinematography by the legendary Haskell Wexler. In the director’s commentary, Sayles discusses the problems of working with animals (the trained gulls didn’t want to fly if they could get their food by walking) and the ocean (“In some scenes the grandfather is talking to empty air because the kids were too seasick.”). “Once a selkie recovers its skin, not force nor love can keep her from the sea again.”
Every year we try to spend the weekend at the Nevermore Film Festival, but every year we only make a couple. However, this year we made good picks:
THE SHOWER (2014) is something of a Let’s Put on a Show film, as the director and writer recruited most of the cast from their fellow wait-staff at the restaurant where they work. A group of largely failed actors and writers gathering together for a baby shower only to discover a zombie pandemic, martial law and an EMP have left them trapped (which makes me suggest Buñuel’s Exterminating Angel as a double-bill) by such menaces as a cannibalistic little girl and a killer clown. And of course, the disease is now infecting the group … In the Q&A the screenwriter said his original concept was a rom-com dealing with these people at a low point in their lives, only to find putting their lives on the line energized it (he adds that Sean of the Dead was the main zombie influence). “You’re really getting on my nerves—and as I’m a clown, that’s saying a lot.”
The director of THE VISITANT (2014) says the film was made on a $20,000 budget (“My wife gave me $10,000, my business partner gave me $10,000.”) but it’s one where minimal special effects and shooting at his house work at well. The protagonist of what’s close to a one-woman show is a fake medium who blithely assures a terrified client that Of Course I’ll Take This Spirit From You, and only begins to realize the mistake when doors slam of their own, lights go on and off, and sounds are heard on the upper floor even though she’s alone in the house … Effectively creepy. “A spirit of the tenth class? That’s not something to joke about.”
THE ACT OF KILLING (2012) is a bizarre documentary about the 1960s anti-communist butchery in Indonesia, the premise being that the film-makers invite some of the participants to star in a movie re-enacting the events. While I’m aware intellectually that people can commit atrocities without batting an eye, it’s still chilling to watch the gangsters (“The word means ‘free man.’”) celebrate their killings, direct the actors (“Now scream ‘Please don’t kill my mother.’”) and defend their past. A few of them begin to suspect this is not showing them in their best light (“This makes it look as though we were the cruel ones.”) and the film unsurprisingly focuses on one aging gangster who finally gets it. Memorable, certainly. “If they were all pretty, I’d rape, them. It was easy back when we were the law.”