Sister Tempest
Sometimes you just have to stop with the world and be the cookie, slowly coming apart in a highball glass full of milk. It’s not the end of you as a cookie, but a new state of being. Cookie pudding is a perfectly acceptable thing to be. Not all the time, of course. But time can make even the best of us stale and crunchy where we shouldn’t be. So take a moment, and figure out who you are. Get your vaccine when you’re eligible, and figure out what your next step is to make the world a better place. Also, Gov. Bill Lee’s insistence on not expanding Medicaid means every Tennessean is entitled to something from his house. Choose wisely.
As always, here are some recommendations for what to stream this week. Look back at past issues of the Scene for more: March 26, April 2, April 9, April 16, April 23, April 30, May 7, May 14, May 21, May 28, June 4, June 11, June 18, June 25, July 2, July 9, July 16, July 23, July 30, Aug. 6, Aug. 13, Aug. 20, Aug. 27, Sept. 3, Sept. 10, Sept. 17, Sept. 24, Oct. 1, Oct. 15, Oct. 29, Nov. 5, Nov. 11, Nov. 26, Dec. 3, Dec. 17, Jan. 6, Jan. 21, Jan. 28, Feb. 4, Feb. 11, Feb. 18, Feb. 25, March 11, March 18.
Sister Tempest via Video on Demand
Do you ever see something so full of imagination and joy in storytelling that you just want to convert a Winnebago to a mobile theater and show it to everyone you see, one at a time, till death claims you with a smile on your face, because you at last found a noble purpose that expanded consciousnesses and flipped all sorts of atrophying synapses?
Again and again you’ll read people on the internet lamenting the state of American independent cinema, and sometimes it can be very easy to lose hope — until you see something like this. A fantasy epic that feels utterly unique, Sister Tempest was one of the surprises that surfaced at the 2020 Frightening Ass Film Fest and laid waste to complacency, as if the sisters from a Catherine Breillat film decided to adapt Zardoz at a drive-in. I’ve still not recovered from its relentless imagination and innovation, spanning multiple worlds with can-do spirit, Tarsemian opulence and unspeakable violence. This is a visionary epic made on a mumblecore budget, and I can’t wait to see everything writer-director Joe Badon does for the rest of his career. Someone give this guy the money to do a Tom Robbins adaptation, because this Borgesian ride delivers all you could hope for, and more. Perhaps you think you’ve seen everything — you most certainly have not.
The Queen of Black Magic
The Queen of Black Magic (1981) on Shudder
Thankfully, the success of the 2020 revisioning of The Queen of Black Magic led Shudder to pick up 1981’s original, an Indonesiansploitation classic starring the incomparable Suzzanna as Murni, a young woman betrayed by her lover and nearly murdered by an angry mob of people who think she attempted to use the dark arts to ruin a wedding. Fortunately, Murni is rescued by an old hermit who nurses her back to health and has a very interesting philosophy. Since the village tried to kill Murni for using black magic that she hadn’t used, why not actually learn black magic and show them what for? You know what that means: Mystical training montages; deliriously gory revenge (lots of annelids, blisters that swell and explode in geysers of blood and pus, ball lightning, plenty of Cronenbergian kaboom). There’s also a moment in which Murni, feeling betrayed by the young satria who’s been courting her, wrecks an entire lair while shouting “Why must all men be liars!” It’s awesome. Also, it operates on the philosophy that as your enemies meet their ignoble ends, your outfits get better.
Dead Space via Tubi
When my friend Dave B. texts and says, “Hey, you wanna see something terrible and amazing?” — that’s a text I pay attention to. “It’s on Tubi. Elm Street ripoff.” By this point, I’m hooked, because it’s been way too long since there’s been a good Elm Street ripoff. Or even a bad one, for that matter. And then, the hinge of the trap snaps shut with the most soul-destroying seven words imaginable in a situation centering on exploitation cinema: “Actually, it’s the Elm Street remake ripoff.” And he was horribly correct. The only reason the Nightmare on Elm Street remake wasn’t the worst thing that happened when it came out was that it opened the weekend of Nashville’s 2010 flood. And this Chinese ripoff, Dead Space, seems to have been made by folk who’ve never seen the 1984 original, deriving every plot point, texture and unfortunate choice from the remake. Director Zhou Xiang is an accomplished mimic, getting the perfunctory flow of Samuel Bayer’s joyless desecration exactly right. This is such a shameless enterprise that it doesn’t even have an IMDb page. It’s 76 minutes long, and it felt longer than Sátántangó.
