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Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence 1983
So much of this is just catnip to my visual and musical sensibilities that I'm not sure I can fully explain why I loved it as much as I did. Usually my favorite films are the ones that evade me, but Oshima isn't working with any spectacularly complex ideas here: it's a dark fantasy about the destructive power of desires sublimated into social codes, which is not, per se, anything earth-shattering. And yet there's something so uniquely beautiful about the…
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Opera 1987
quite possibly Argento's best. it's greatly to his credit that Opera feels as rigorous as Suspiria and Tenebrae feel loose, although that's not at all a knock on the latter two films. besides the superficial pleasures of having a more neatly constructed narrative structure, this rigor dovetails nicely with Opera's focus on order. nearly every shot feels deliberate and ordered, part of an efficient narrative machine which ultimately crumbles at the film's denouement, in tandem with the killer's obsessive plotting and control falling apart. absolutely fantastic.
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Beneath the Skin 1981
I dreamed that it was me and not her that he killed...
but that's another story