I'm Back!

Hello my friends,

I would like to announce that I am back to watching and reviewing films that I watch.  Since I intended this to be a foreign film blog, I will not ever review anything mainstream unless it is super awesome or bad that I just need to talk about it.  However, I really want to start including horror movie reviews on here so maybe I will title this blog "Starlight Skye's Foreign and Horror Film Reviews Blog", but maybe that is a bit too long for a title (?).  In any case, I am glad to be back on here writing and I hope you can enjoy my reviews on here whether you agree with them or not :)!

Starlight Skye

Chained (2012)

I just finished watching an amazing and very well-acted 2012 American psychological thriller-slasher film by Jennifer Lynch called "Chained".  This film is about a young 9 year old boy named Tim (Evan Bird) who was encouraged by his father, Brad (Jake Weber), to take a cab home from the cinema with his mother, Sarah (Julia Ormond), instead of a bus.  After the show, Sarah and Tim took the cab but the cab driver, Bob (Vincent D'Onofrio), abducts them into his house instead of taking them to their house.  Bob murders Sarah and forces Tim to live with him by practically making him his slave.  Bob also renames Tim "Rabbit".  Rabbit was forced to do various chores for Bob such as cleaning the house and eating Bob's left-over foods.  After Rabbit tried to run away one day, Bob put a chain around his ankle so that he would not escape.  It is quickly revealed that Bob is a serial killer and Rabbit was forced many times to watch Bob rape and murder women after women in his house.  It is also revealed that Bob was severely abused and raped by his own father, who was also a murderer.

9 years later, Rabbit (Eamon Farren) is still living as Bob's slave and even though Bob continues murdering random women, Rabbit still keeps his innocence and still believes murder is wrong.  One day, Bob tells Rabbit that he wants him to be educated and smart so he gives him a book about human anatomy.  However, the trick is that Bob now wants Rabbit to be a rapist and a murder as well.  He brings Rabbit a high school yearbook and forces him to pick a girl he finds attractive to lose his virginity to and to be his first victim.  Forcefully, Rabbit chooses a girl named Angie (Conor Leslie).

Bob kidnaps Angie and puts her in a room.  He grabs Rabbit into the room, gives him a knife, and tells him to rape and kill her.  Bob then shuts the door leaving both of them in the room.  Rabbit, being well-versed in human anatomy now, stabs Angie but stabs her in an area where she won't die.  She plays dead and Rabbit puts her in the basement.  He then comes out of the room filled with blood and Bob is proud of him.

Now that Rabbit has supposedly killed someone, Bob allows him to leave the house.  Together, they take Bob's cab and Bob starts looking for his next female victim, this time asking which one Rabbit prefers.  Rabbit tells Bob that he doesn't want to kill anyone and after Bob notices that Rabbit wrote "help" on the outside of the cab's door, he gets angry and they end up going home.  Without Rabbit's knowledge, Bob told Rabbit that he secretly taped his and Angie's room incident but he hasn't watched it yet.  Rabbit gets scared since he didn't actually kill her so he told Bob the truth.  Bob gets angry, drives home quickly, and goes to the basement to kill Angie, who is still alive.  Thankfully, Rabbit barges in, kills Bob, and both him and Angie are finally free.

The first thing Rabbit does is drive Bob's cab to his original home to see his dad, Brad.  Brad opens the door and Rabbit sees that he's happily married to his new wife, Marie (Gina Philips) and has a young son with her.  Rabbit is angry seeing his father have a puppy in the house since a puppy is something Rabbit always wanted but his father denied him.  Rabbit reveals a letter he found at Bob's apartment.  In the letter, it is revealed that Bob is actually Rabbit's uncle and Brad's brother...and Brad actually paid Bob to arrange the abduction and get rid of both Sarah and Tim.  Brad gets angry, starts beating Marie, and in self-defense, Rabbit smashes Brad's head with a glass killing him.  Marie asks Rabbit to quickly leave and calls the cops claiming burglars have killed her husband.  Rabbit then drives Bob's cab back to Bob's house as it's the only place he could hide for now.

I personally thought this film was very gritty, dark, deep, depressing, emotional, and very psychological.  It is definitely one of my favorite so-called horror movies now.  "Chained" is very well-written and the acting is top notch.  I especially thought the actor who played the teenage Rabbit, Eamon Farren, was the best actor in this and was incredibly believable in his role as a traumatized, scared child.  Though, admittedly, Vincent D'Onofrio played the creepy villain just as good.  I am not very familiar with Jennifer Lynch aside from the fact that she is David Lynch's daughter but with a film like this one, I definitely want to see more from her.  She did a wonderful job with this!  I give this a 9/10.

Favorite Film Director: Gaspar Noé

Gaspar Noe is an Argentine film director and screenwriter who was born on December 27, 1963.  He has directed music videos, short films, and feature films.  When it comes to his music videos, I have so far only seen Placebo's "Protege-Moi" but that is because I am an equally big Placebo fan as well.

When it comes to movies, Noe has directed the films "Carne" (short film), "I Stand Alone", "Irreversible", and "Enter the Void" among others.  I have seen all four of these films and enjoyed all of them very much because they were directed in a very interesting way, they have unique story lines, and all of them are very controversial and make you think.  Noe has also used very fitting lighting and great music for those films which have really set the mood.  Right now, Noe is directing a film called "Love", which is set out to release sometime this year.  "Love" apparently is a film about love told from a sexual point of view.  Since I enjoyed his other four films, I am sure I will love this one as well.  If anyone is interested in seeing "Enter the Void", it is currently streaming on Netflix right now!  It is long and it requires a lot of patience, but hopefully you won't regret watching it ;).

La Pianiste (2001)

Yesterday I watched a 2001 French-Austrian erotic thriller film directed by Michael Haneke called “La Pianiste” (The Piano Teacher) which stars Isabelle Huppert and Benoit Magimel. This film is about a sexually repressed and extremely sheltered forty-something year old piano teacher named Erika Kohut (Isabelle Huppert), who shares an apartment (and bed) with her domineering and overly strict mother (Annie Girardot) and barely gets any privacy at home or a chance to live a normal life. Her father is not in the picture as he has been a long-standing resident in a psychiatric asylum though he does eventually die. Erika is a “secret” fetishist who has a long list of sadomasochistic fantasies that have never seemed to be fulfilled so she often goes to porn shops to get her temporary fix by watching BDSM porn in private porn rooms. As a job, Erika works as a piano teacher and is a huge appreciator and interpreter of the works of Schumann and Schubert. One day, she meets a charming 17-year old piano student named Walter Klemmer (Benoit Magimel) who is also a fan and a gifted interpreter of Schumann and Schubert and starts flirting with Erika. At first, Erika dismisses his flirting and is not a huge fan of him. That changes, however, when the two of them share a passionate kiss in the bathroom, which ends up not going so well when Erika starts being demanding towards him and humiliates him. Basically, she makes it clear to Walter that the only way they can share a sexual relationship together is if it is entirely on her terms and goes completely her way. Therefore, she gives him a letter of specific instructions consisting of him beating, humiliating, and raping her in her own home. Walter reads the letter out loud next to Erika and starts finding her repulsive and begins feeling disgusted towards her. Feeling embarrassed of the fact that she gave him the letter without them talking about it in the first place, Erika visits Walter at his school and apologizes for the letter while desperately expressing her love towards him. At this point, Walter has lost all interest in Erika though one day he does randomly show up in her apartment and beats and rapes her in the fashion that Erika has desired in the letter, while locking up her mother in the living room. Erika does not seem to enjoy it and feels completely heartbroken and defeated when she sees Walter the next day being cheerful and happy with his family and acting like nothing happened. While he has moved on, she has been traumatized for life so she stabs herself in the shoulder and walks away.

I think the movie was very good and incredibly well acted by all the actors so I will give it a 10/10, though it is not a film I would want to see again only because it was so depressing. I know that this film is based on a book of the same name written by Elfriede Jelinek, but I have not read it so correct me if I am wrong in any of my own interpretations of the film. I felt that a lot of the film had to do with the battle of power and control between Erika and Walter. Both of them seemed to like being in control for the sake of their own ego and interests and in the end Walter won. I do not think Walter actually loved Erika. I think that he was a seducer and needed to have power over her since she was such a huge challenge to him at first. Basically, he enjoyed a good game of “cat and mouse” and once he got what he wanted, he left satisfied and had no further need for her. As for Erika, I think she underestimated Walter and thought that because he expressed such love for her, she found him weak and felt that she could control him and use him to satisfy all her sexual fantasies. However, in the end, it wasn't that way at all since nothing ever works out nicely if all parties involved are selfish. As for the director, Michael Haneke is excellent. I saw both of his own versions of “Funny Games” which I loved and now I have added “La Pianiste” to my collection. I think I will watch “Amour” (2012) next since I see that one has gotten a lot of positive reviews as well!

My Favorite Artist: Lois Van Baarle

Lois Van Baarle is a self-taught Dutch artist who has been drawing digitally since 2003 and is currently working as a freelance illustrator and animator.  She has traveled and lived in various places all over the world and currently resides in the Netherlands (Utrecht) with her boyfriend.  

I am absolutely in love with her work.  I ran across her drawings a few months ago as I was browsing random art/photography pages on Facebook and one of them had a drawing of her's and I really liked it so I checked out her other drawings as well.

I love her style because it is very neat, interesting, inviting, and fun to look at.  It almost looks like anime style mixed with a bit of Tim Burton style and the colors are always bright and vibrant.

One of my best friends got me her official 2015 calendar filled with awesome drawings.  It is now hanging in my kitchen wall and I love looking at it.  Even my sister loves the images!  As you can see from my her drawings on my post, who wouldn't love such epic images?

Lois Van Baarle's official websites:

http://loish.deviantart.com/

http://loish.net/

http://loish.net/faq/ (Check this link out if you'd like to get to know how she learned to draw digitally and what mediums she has used.)

American Mary (2012)

“American Mary” is a 2012 Canadian slasher film about an innocent medical student named Mary Mason (Katharine Isabelle) who is preparing to become a surgeon but is having financial problems and is trying to find a way to pay for her student loans as well. Despite being a very smart student in her class, her professor Dr. Alan Grant (David Lovgren) isn’t very nice to her at all and tends to always call her out in class in a rather mean way. One day, Mary decides to apply to a strip club and while she gets the job, the club’s owner Billy Barker (Antonio Cupo) takes her to an underground room where she is asked to perform surgery to a tortured man for $5,000. She does so, but she does not enjoy the experience and leaves feeling disgusted. Several days later, Beatress Johnson (Tristan Risk), a fellow stripper at the club who has had heavy plastic surgery to look like Betty Boop, approaches Mary and offers her $10,000 to perform surgery on her friend named Ruby Realgirl (Paula Lindberg). Ruby, who already has massive plastic surgery on her face as well, wants to be a human doll and wants to Mary to remove her nipples and labia. Mary goes along with it and ends up enjoying it since she is getting such big bucks out of this. When Mary goes back to class, she gets invited to a party with several surgeons at her hospital, including Dr. Grant. Well, she ends up going to the party and gets drugged and raped by him and quits medical school. This is when Mary starts using her skills as surgeon to get revenge on Dr. Grant by kidnapping him and performing many involuntary body modifications on him. What once was an innocent girl has turned into a vengeful sadist, but will she get away with what she has done? Watch the film and find out! I don’t want to spoil too much for you especially since it’s streaming on Netflix right now.

I give this film a 10/10. What can I say? I enjoyed the film from beginning to end and I felt it was very unique, different, and dare I say beautiful. Katharine Isabelle is one of my favorite actresses ever since I saw her in “Turning Paige” and “Ginger Snaps” and she totally rocked in this film. I loved seeing Mary’s transformation in personality during the film and felt that Katharine Isabelle was very convincing in portraying that. The Soska Sisters did an amazing job directing it. As a viewer and after seeing many interviews with them regarding the film, they seemed very passionate about it and it definitely shows through as you’re watching it. The soundtrack is pretty rad as well. I love the song “My Suicide” by Luise Pepe and “Ave Maria”.

Introduction

Hello fellow bloggers,

I would like to start off by saying that this is not my first time using blogger.  I have had another blogger account where I would review any foreign films that I saw as well as talk about situations in my daily life, and express love to my favorite foreign film actors/actresses.  Well, life happened and I ended up getting rid of that account but I am back and ready to start reviewing again.

I tend to enjoy very interesting non-mainstream films.  Dark, emotional, controversial and thinking films are definitely my favorites.  I love interesting, well thought out "artsy" movies such as "Enter the Void" and definitely appreciate one of the ever most controversial film I have ever seen in my life, "A Serbian Film".  Therefore, if you enjoy the works of Takashi Miike, Alejandro Amenabar, Gaspar Noe, and the Soska Sisters (Jen & Sylvia Soska) just to name a few, then this blog is for you!

As for me, well my name is Skye.  I am a girl who enjoys drawing/painting, nail art (manicures & pedicures), modeling, yoga, foreign languages, dancing, cooking, and traveling the world.  I am very physically active and I am very much similar to a curious cat in the sense that I am a complete information sponge and love learning new skills and trying new things!

Well, with that said, I probably should be getting back to work now so I hope you all have a fantastic day!

Sincerely,

Skye ;)