At the movies: By The Sea.

If you missed seeing Angelina Jolie Pitt's third film as director, By The Sea, during its tragically abbreviated theatrical run, then let this missive serve to pique your interest until it surfaces in a home media format. It's an exceptional film that got shit on by lots of folk, and that's a damn shame.

What's New in the World of NSFW Movie Trailers?

First and foremost, nothing in this post is appropriate for viewing by anyone with any sense of decency or a well-adjusted moral compass.

As a critic and media prophet, it's my job to be aware of what's coming your way in the world of transgressive cinema. It's also something that I- well, let's not say enjoy, but it's something that I'm more than willing to do.

I don't endorse violence and degradation in real life.

Movies are not real, but they can express aspects of the human condition just as any art form does.

And now that we have that out of the way (and seriously, this is your last chance warning; if you don't regularly discuss contemporary art cinema, please skip this piece and move on to the photography and the section where I talk about Tyler Perry), here we go...



SHOWGIRLS: THE RETURN

This film's director Marc Vorlander is apparently battling it out with Rena Riffel (you know, Penny/Hope from the original) for dueling Showgirl movies.

I say "please, y'all, may I have some more." Everyone should make a Showgirl movie. Quentin Tarantino, Claire Denis, Philippe Grandrieux, and Gaspar Noe should all make Showgirl movies. Because I have no idea what to think of this. It's just under five minutes, and has been trimmed from the unending ten minute monstrosity at the film's official website. And the music feels like a riff on John Carpenter's Halloween music over the beat from Schooly D's "PSK (What Does it Mean?)."

Notable fan of timeless American values and human decency Erik S pointed out, quite accurately, that this totally looks like a Fantom Kiler movie.
Also, just for comparison's sake, here's Rena Riffel's trailer for her own Showgirls sequel.

"How bad do you want it? Bad..."



ENTER THE VOID ("Soudain Le Vide")

Gaspar Noe is kind of awesome. A few years back, he hosted a night at the IFC Center in NYC where he showed 35mm prints of Seul Contre Tous and Salo, and in between the two I got to talk to him for a couple of minutes about his work, Kubrickian motifs, and Bruno Dumont's Flanders; he even signed my ticket, so full props to him.

He's made two beautiful misanthropic masterpieces (the aforementioned Seul Contre Tous and the staggering Irreversible), and now here comes his third feature, with an inordinate amount of sex and drugs and pinballing through the streets of Tokyo. Music by Thomas Bangalter from Daft Punk, no less. Here's the Japanese trailer.

The colors... I've actually talked to people who have seen this, and I am super-pumped, especially since (unlike every other film discussed on this page) it actually has U.S. distribution from the lovable freaks at IFC Films. And seriously, how can you not love one of the most twisted characters in the world cinema game who confesses to crying when they killed HomeTree in Avatar?



KINATAY (which, for some reason has been given the English language title of "The Execution of P")

This film, like Enter The Void, premiered at Cannes '09, where its director Brillante Mendoza (who made the porny, atmospheric Serbis a couple of years ago) won the Best Director Award and Roger Ebert lost his mind about it. It's about corruption, Catholicism, misogyny, dehumanization, and the darkest parts of physical space and the human heart.

There's no English-friendly trailer yet, but this French-subtitled one gets the point across (though I actually think it soft-pedals the film's brutality and experimental quality- this could easily be an American trailer for a foreign film, the way it focuses on aspects of family and moral choice).

Kinatay sur Comme Au Cinema

The actual translation of the title is "Butchered" or "Slaughter." You probably guessed that, though.



and that brings us to the big nasty.

This film hit Texas this week with the force of several hundred dropped jaws, countless buckets of tears and vomit, and dozens of spontaneous religious awakenings. I'm talking, of course, about...



A SERBIAN FILM ("Srpski Film")

If even an eighth of what has been said about this film is true, I fear it may cause crops to wither, pregnant ladies to explode, and sex to stop happening across the board. Explicitly political and super-upsetting, this is currently the most scandalous film in the world.

Now my question is this- what is the song used in the latter half of the trailer? Y'all know I love squelchy synth drones as a counterpoint to shock and horror.

So, that brings us to the end of this compendium of What's New in the World of NSFW Movie Trailers. Many thanks are due the lovable freaks at Twitch Film and Zack H for bringing some of these to my attention, and big ups to you for making it this far.

At the movies: Jeanne Dielman 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.

Jeanne (Delphine Seyrig, whom you may remember from Last Year at Marienbad or The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie) is a widow. She is a mother, a cook, a babysitter, and an occasional prostitute. Her life is built in the security of routine and deliberation.

Her story is not the story of all women; but in being the story of one Belgian woman, it approaches the universal. This is a film about time, and truth, and desperation. It exacts a price, this film, but leaves the viewer with the sense that they have indeed spent some time living the life of another.

Making its Nashville debut at the Belcourt, Jeanne Dielman… is a landmark of experimental cinema. Director Chantal Akerman here makes extensive use of long takes with locked-off camera, and the end result has been confounding and evolving viewers for thirty-five years. It is in direct opposition to the philosophies of modern cinema that hold that if a meal appears on screen, then we can infer its creation and proceed accordingly.

There is no inference in this world- we experience it all.

This isn’t a film for everyone, but it is a film meant for everyone. Regardless of your own life experience, there is no one who can’t understand the enervating securities of routine and habit. A job you might be stuck in. A family in whose gears you try and live. A relationship that makes the act of living into a placeholder.

We’ve all of us lived parts of our lives in wrenching real-time, and Jeanne Dielman presents it with neither hesitation nor transcendence. We live in its space.

If there's any complaint to be made about the film, it's that one cannot experience it as the breakthrough it was in its initial release. So much of its visual and structural language has since been assimilated and absorbed by other filmmakers and their films, it's hard to see Jeanne as the innovator that it is.

Still, it is such an overwhelming experience, I cannot help but recommend it to anyone who considers moviegoer their religious affiliation.