Keanen's Film Blog

Melancholia is a senior-safe introduction to Lars von Trier. If you’ve been living under a rock and don’t know who he is, von Trier is a filmmaker from the distant land of Germany who is known for boundary-pushing avant-garde cinema. Most of his films are released unrated to cinephile audiences. This is one of the exceptions.

Melancholia was released America-style mainstream for whiskey-drinking simpletons. It has few “genre” elements and stays within the self-imposed prison of the “drama” category through most of the film. There is some sci-fi brewing in the background, but 95% of the film could play for a geriatric home.

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A softcore erotic film about S&M. It feels like the film barely got produced, with concessions made to focus more on family than pain. Awkward intangible bullshit does not a tense thriller make. The frame story gets so much screen time that I am left wondering what the film could have been.

This is far from a perfect film, but compared to the more mainstream fare the likes of Amazon are trying to push, it’s nice to see a Finnish product.

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In moving pictures, dark fantasy usually sucks. (With the exception of Hellraiser and The Witcher.) “Evil is good” is a tough sell for American Christian audiences, who have historically made up the bulk of Hollywood’s market. Anime can get away with a lot more, but in terms of American movies, there is not much to pick from.

Let’s consider for a moment that Groundhog Day is dark fantasy in disguise. It’s a “what if?” movie, and such movies are usually explainable if you assume the protagonist has demonic powers. Bill Murray is the spirit of Satan, doing ritual suicides and resurrecting repeatedly. He lusts after his naive muse, bending time to subjugate her to his will. The man is unstoppable, and at the climax he takes the titular pagan sacrificial animal with him to the grave, only to resurrect and claim vengeance again.

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Here’s another sci-fi movie I think is cool. If you’re a fan of Michael Crichton’s concepts but not his writing, this one is both hit and miss. It feels like a slower version of Timeline (2003). Watch it. It’s good.

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Enter a better time: a vision of the future from the past. 1980s grunge meets pseudo-cyberpunk. It is the future foretold by video games, whose sensibilities are industrial brutalism of metal and stone, a world where might makes right and even Klingon weaponry cannot compete with the ultimate weapon from the great halls of science: time. Yes, time, the final frontier.

Trancers is an interesting artifact. It comes from Empire Pictures (Full Moon Video’s theatrical predecessor), which Chuck Band sold to MGM in 2020. This means MGM owns Trancers. All business aside, the chemistry between stars Tim Thomerson and Helen Hunt is so beautiful that even the questionable sequels have sublime moments. No matter how stupid the scripts got, the above-average cast always gave it their all. The series as a whole is highly recommended.

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