Martin Eden
I write about horror a lot. But we’re now smack-dab in the middle of October, so it’s to a certain extent expected. Horror isn’t limited by season, but it’s certainly the genre that has best embodied the 2020 experience. So let’s take this journey gingerly, because it seems like absolutely anything can happen these days. The previous 26 weeks of capsules are available (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), and I promise you’ve got a lot of spooky and shocking options with which to experience your candy binge of choice. Read on for this week’s creepy recommendations.
Martin Eden via the Belcourt
Based on a Jack London novel, Martin Eden is a grounded and literate tale of integrity and vision and how absolutes tend to unmake any certainties we may have thought we were operating under. It’s spiky and tactile in its visual sensibility, and director Pietro Marcello shifts things around from the original text while still tackling London’s exploration of individualism and class structure. Star Luca Marinelli (if you’ve seen Netflix’s The Old Guard, he was Nicky, one of the supergays whose security-van dialogue you will hear repurposed into vows at so many future gay weddings if whatever the Supreme Court becomes doesn’t annihilate Obergefell) is exceptional in a role that covers a lot of time and a lot of perspectives. If the film’s deep dives into social theory don’t necessarily do it for you, Marinelli’s award-winning performance will. Martin Eden is a brainy seduction for philosophers and ground-down pragmatists alike. This one is available via the Belcourt Theatre’s Virtual Cinema beginning Oct. 16; in Italian with English subtitles.
Martin Eden
Tumbbad on Amazon Prime
If Clive Barker had made There Will Be Blood, it might have gone something like this Hindi-language horror epic. With Tumbbad, the team of Rahi Anil Barve, Adesh Prasad and Anand Gandhi have created something special that manages to be genuinely scary, politically resonant and profoundly imaginative. The Rao family is our focal point for several generations, and they discover in the early 20th century a secret involving the shunned god Hastar that allows them to weather British colonization and uncertain economic times for decades — but at an unspeakable cost. This is one of those streaming gems that will sneak up on you — you’ll ponder your own financial situation as well as some unsettling baking choices. Not to be missed.
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story on Netflix
It’s safe to call this film a modern classic by now, I think. It’s certainly impossible to make a biopic of the life of a musician without checking this movie to make sure one isn’t aping any of the clichés it valiantly wrestles to the ground. Director Jake Kasdan (Zero Effect) has done the work with Walk Hard, making sure to leave no stone unturned and no montage forsaken in bringing the story of legendary musician Dewey Cox (John C. Reilly) to life, tracing his story from family trauma (shout-out to the legendary Margo Martindale as Mama Cox) through hard-won success, chemical tribulation and the many peaks and valleys of the music business in the 20th century. Reilly is nothing less than stellar, and the show he performed (in character) at the Mercy Lounge was one of 2007’s truly great live experiences. “I’m cut in half real bad ...”
Elvira: Mistress of the Dark on Tubi
Campy, witty and always eager to push the bawdy limits of a PG-13 rating, this 1988 delight allows comedienne Cassandra Peterson to let her alter ego go wild in a classic horror narrative of ancient family secrets, occult ritual and suburban hypocrisy. Falwell, Mass., just isn’t ready for Elvira, who lives every moment for Vegas glitz and Paul Lynde-style one-liners. The fact that she is also solving a supernatural mystery and helping the repressed townspeople loosen up and let their freak flags fly is just icing on the cake. If you’ve been missing drag shows or haunted houses, Elvira: Mistress of the Dark really is your best bet at combining those two experiences. With Edie McClurg as hypocritical busybody Chastity Pariah and Ira (“I am the Wizard Master” from Elm Street 3) Heiden as one of the local teens healed by the power of B-movies and bosoms.
Killer Klowns From Outer Space on Netflix
Nightmarishly effective and perfect in tonal balance, the Chiodo Brothers’ Killer Klowns From Outer Space is a love letter to drive-in creature features and every special effects discipline one could conceive of in the late ’80s. A rampaging band of extraterrestrial clowns has landed on earth to imprison humanity in cotton-candy pods and drain our juices with ornate swizzle sticks. They’ve got carnivorous popcorn, corrosive pies and a flair for the mordantly comic. Like their ideologcal siblings the Gremlins, the Ghoulies and the (Chiodo-designed) Critters, these creatures are the chaos and excess of unbridled consumption given life and license to fuck up all of our endeavors. Funny but also genuinely disturbing (there’s something immediately dangerous about these clowns), Killer Klowns has dozens of images and moments that will stick in your subconscious.
2.0 on Amazon Prime
If you are unfamiliar with Superstar Rajinikanth, know that he is one of the biggest movie stars on the planet, and in this 2018 sci-fi/fantasy epic (a sequel to 2010’s Enthiran), he is a brilliant scientist but also an android army who is the only defense humanity has left after people’s cell phones have vanished from their owners’ very hands only to take the form of a suicidal ornithologist (the exceptional Akshay Kumar). The latter has gathered his consciousness in the form of a giant bird bent on destroying CEOs (Freddy Krueger-style) and corporate headquarters all over the Indian subcontinent. I promise that at least five or six times 2.0 will have you delirious with the possibility of what director Shankar Shanmugam and Rajinikanth are doing here, because this movie wants to entertain you in every possible way you can imagine. Symbolic retribution for those who plunder the land and cull the skies goes hand in hand with robot boner jokes and soccer-field shenanigans. Though it’s tragically not available in 3D via any streaming service, with 2.0, Shankar made the last great native 3D film. Take two-and-a-half hours and give yourself over to this singular experience, available in (original language) Tamil, Telugu and Hindi. And if you feel the Rajinikanth magic, may I also recommend Petta (streaming on Netflix), wherein he kicks an entire frat party’s ass in a dance fight.
