Portal To Hell (2025) Slamdance 2025

PORTAL TO HELL lists in the Slamdance write up as a horror film and a comedy. The thing is it's neither really. It's a fable that never quite gets the tone right.

The plot has a debt collector discovering a portal to hell in the local laundromat. It transpires that it opened so that a demon can cross over and take the collectors next door neighbor who is, by all accounts a great guy. As things go he begins to feed people into the portal in the hope of saving his friend. 

There is a great film locked in this story, but this isn't it. As much as I love almost everything about the film, I absolutely hate the matter of fact tone. That would work except that the film alternately tries to play things as a horror film (it's lit that way) or didn't know what to feel or think. Forgive me the story and the performances but the director's choices work against the audience connecting to it.

Give the film points for trying but the film never satisfies.

Flow (2024) opens Friday

FLOW is one of the great films of 2024. It’s probably one of the greatest animated films ever made. I suspect in five years it will be hailed as a classic.

A kind of fable, the film is the story of a cat who ends up on a boat with some other animals raveling across the world during a flood.  It’s a tale of life on a grand scale told without dialog.

This is a a grand adventure. Set somewhere else at some other time and place where people are no longer around the film creates a world where anything is possible. Animals that shouldn't be together are. There are references to places here on earth, but nothing concrete. There are some magical creatures, and fantastic turns but it all makes absolute perfect emotional sense. 

I know that everyone is going to have their say about the film. Countless podcasts and You Tube videos explaining a film that doesn’t have to be explained, but simply experienced, will be popping up soon. That we live in a time where everyone has to put out pieces where they explain what the director meant, or more likely saying how their take is the only right one, is a sad one. Everyone should be able to have the film mean what ever they want it to mean. FLOW needs to thrive however it thrives in the hearts of everyone who sees it.

As a work of art, this film is of the highest order. The images and storytelling are near perfect, not always in a brain logic sense but in a dead on heart sort of way. This film moved me viscerally and I wanted to to stop the film several times just because I was so overwhelmed that I wanted to just cry at the beauty of it all. (Several people behind me at the screening were loudly sobbing)

Cinema does not get much better than this.

Similar in some ways to director Gints Zilbalodis’ earlier AWAY because of the mystical journey, this is a vast jump in quality. This is film is a film where the student becomes the master. Everything here is nigh on perfect with the character design and animation being of a quality that few animators ever achieve. All you need to is watch  the eyes of the cat, or any of the characters and you’ll be amazed. Its so good that you’ll wish that the filmmakers could get special Oscars for their work- or compete in the best performance category. I’m serious-the best performances of the year are all computer generated.

In some ways the film nay remind you of some questing computer games. Some games like MYST came to mind (and one person I spoke with after the screening listed others).  And while I can see the influence perhaps in image referencing, I can’t say that the it is more than an influence. I say that because films are not games. We do not have control. The questing structure is as old as humanity. Additionally I have never been as invested and connected to a video game story or characters as I am here. There is a realness here that makes FLOW something greater than it’s influences. 

In a weird way the film also feels like Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld. I can't say why, largely because it's been years since I last read the stories, but there is still something haunting me.

This film is any, and every, superlative you can think of. It is a film at the highest level of cinematic art. It will move you in ways you didn’t think were possible.

Highly recommended.

Look for FLOW to have  a long life.

(And it should be noted that the film does have a post credits sequence. It’s brief but explains what happens to one character)

The Six Singing Women (2023) Japan Cuts 2024

Yoshimasa Ishibashi who's Milocrorze: A Love Story wowed the Japan Cuts Audiences a little more than a decade ago, returns with an environmental tale wrapped in a strange mystery.

When a photographer's father passes away he is has to return home to sell his father's things which are located deep in the woods.  While heading home with a real estate agent of questionable motives, they find they can not leave the woods. They are in fact held captive after a fashion by six beautiful but strange women.

The hows and whys of what is going on takes some time to unravel and as it does the films shifts from a kind of mystery into the territory of environmental fable. It's an odd shift that allows for some amazing sequences that draw us in  as the beauty and strangeness of what we are seeing makes us lean in. This is for much of its running time a very compelling film 

At the same time the shift untethers the narrative just enough that Ishibashi can't reign it all in. Plot threads shoot out from between his fingers and there is a sense that everything doesn't matter so long as his point is made. The result is a film that almost works but doesn't quite do so because the director stopped caring one connecting the path to the ending and just jumped there.

I was disappointed. 

While the film isn't bad, it also doesn't work the way it should.

despite over all reservations there are enough moments that the film is worth trying, especially if you are a fan of the director.

Squeal (2022)

 

While on a trip to Eastern Europe a  man, who doesn’t speak the language ends up chained with the pigs by a pig farmer. As he tries to figure out how to escape he is befriended by a pig.

Off kilter black comedy fairy tale is either going to thrill you or make you want to flee. Its a twisted tale that is not for all tastes. Its a very knowing tale that is very interested in making a point of some sort. I’m not entirely sure what that point was or more damagingly if it’s even a valid point. Frankly despite being about pigs this film is really just a long rambling shaggy dog story. I was willing to go with for a while until I suddenly began to realize it wasn’t going to go anywhere. There was a point some way past the half way mark where I got a sense that this was heading toward an WTF ending. While it’s not WTF it is a head scratcher.

Frankly I think that despite the director’s thoughts this film really doesn’t have a point.

Not recommended

THE SHEPHERDESS AND THE SEVEN SONGS opens at MOMA today

Laila, a beautiful young woman is given in marriage to young man who could lift a certain stone. Wary of her husband, who she sees as little more than one of her sheep, she goes with him to his village where she is hit upon by two police officers who lust after her. Finding her husband, less than useless, she must decide for herself what to do.

Based on folk tales and the the life of the Kashmiri mystic Lalleshwari who wandered off into the wilderness to get away from the intrusion of men and whose refrain opens the film, SHEPHERDESS... is hauntingly beautiful film. Told in a series of perfectly framed shots with an often haunting score this may be one of the most beautiful films I've seen in 2020. Every image is worthy of framing.  It is a film that constantly delights the eye.

I am not quite sure how much of the film works beyond that.  Part of the problem is that the story has been overtly fashioned into meditation on the plight of region of Kashmir which has been the source of a fighting between India and Pakistan. Its not that there is anything wrong in being about the conflict, rather it is a tad too overt for my tastes. Don't get me wrong I do like the the underlying tale of the struggle of a young woman trying to find her place in the world she lives in. I adore the fieriness of Laila and her refusal to let things decided for her. I'm just not certain that the film needs the politics

Destiny (1921) (aka Der Müde Tod aka The Weary Death) KINO 2017

Influential film by Fritz Lang was said to be the film that made Hitchcock and Bunuel's interested in the possibilities of film.

Death takes the lover of a young woman. She pleads with him to return her love. After first failing to find anyone to trade places with the dead man she is offered three chances to save the love in each tale, one is set in Arabia, one in Venice and the third in China.

Haunting example of what silent films could be the film influenced not only film makers but films themselves as Douglas Fairbanks bought the rights to the film and raided it for his THIEF OF BAGDAD. This is a film that ends up haunting your dreams and your waking thoughts.

To be honest I find this film hard to discuss. Not for any rational reason, but more because the film always seems to be some sort of waking dream for me. Despite seeing the film multiple times over the years it never hangs with me as other films do but instead gets filed away to the part of my brain where dreams are stored.

While very much the work of Fritz Lang who was starting a run of work almost unmatched in cinema (this was followed by DR MABUSE, DIE NIBELUNGEN, METROPOLIS,SPIES,  WOMAN IN THE MOON,  M, TESTAMENT OF DR MABUSE) the film feels as though it is a blood brother to Muranu's NOSFERATU which was released the next year. There is something about the sense of dread in both, not to mention similar style that makes the films seem related

To be honest there is little I can really say about the film outside of saying that anyone with any sort of love for film must see it. Its not just a matter of the history but the effect that it produces that has to be experienced at least once in every film goers life. I know that this isn't a true review but some times Unseen has to revert to what it was set up to be- namely a pointer for cinematic treasures that are worth seeing.'

The film plays at KINO on April 3 with a special live DJ music score by Raphaël Marionneau.

For tickets go here.

Horns (2014)

A very dark fable and heart breaking romance of the highest order. Its a glorious film that doesn't take the easy route and is so much more satisfying for it.

First bit of business this is not a film for the kids, there is sex, violence, darkness and fuck is said about 800 times.

Daniel Radcliffe play Iggy an unremarkable young man in pretty much every way except for the fact that he has a the best girl in the world Merrin. Ig’s world is blown to hell when Merrin is found murdered and his statements are misconstrued as guilt. As the whole world turns against him, Ig doesn’t know what to do. Things get weird when Ig begins to grown horns, which everyone kind of ignores-except that the horns force the people around him to hell him what they really feel.

More fable then horror story, this semi tragic romance with humor is one of the biggest surprises of the year for me. A wonderful adult delight is exactly the sort of fairy tale that people don’t do any more. I loved this film which is brimming with all sorts of idea, emotions and even humor.

To be honest I don’t know what to say about the film, not because I can’t, I can wax poetic about the film and if you’ve talked to me over the 8 weeks since I first saw the film you know I will go on at length about it, to be honest it’s become one of my favorites of the year, but at the same time I don’t want to tell you anything about the film, I don’t want to wreck the emotion that the film generates, I want you to gop out and just see it, knowing as little as possible. I want you to be like the people around me who laughted and cried and bounced with delight during the course of the film. While I will say that the film has one of my most favorite moments of the year involving the use of the song Personal Jesus, I won’t say anything else.

I do have to say that director Alexandre Aja who has gone overboard with violent nattiness in previous films such as High Tension, manages to hit the right balance here. While there is some nastiness in the film (some of this is not for the squeamish) it’s done at the right time and the right way.

If you want an adult fable and down mind the dark, leave the kids at home and go see Horns, one the years biggest surprises.

The film opens Friday in theaters and can be had on VOD now