postwarglamourgirll

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helicopter/fire walk with me edit :)

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i found a reason/wild at heart edit :)

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smoke gets in your eyes/brief encounter edit :)

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perfect day/all that jazz edit :)

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the cook, the thief, his wife & her lover essay :)

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989, Greenaway) is a sumptuous display of colour and artificiality, its vibrant colours heightening the violence and brutality of its characters. Made in Thatcher's Britain, the film criticises the new money capitalists who gained wealth under the conservative government, portraying them as uncultured and vulgar. The film is set mainly in a restaurant owned by the thief Albert Spica, whose name phonetically resembles 'Speaker', showing how he constantly dominates the conversation and berates those around him. He brutalises his wife, Georgina, and humiliates her in front of his gang, none of whom have the intellect of the wife or the lover, Michael - who Georgina starts an affair with after observing him reading at the restaurant, showing how she yearns for someone to treat her kindly, but also an intellectual equal. Spica appears almost like a libertine; he doesn't care for the finer pleasures of haute cuisine or literature, but almost always talks about sex or food, living a life of excess. Despite his hedonistic, pleasure-seeking lifestyle, he violently rejects any suggestion of homosexuality. Moreover, despite his vulgar language, when his wife briefly mentions her infertility, he harasses her and later physically abuses her. His character shows how the new capitalists were driven by greed and self-interest (rejecting the moral goodness shown through the child, Pup, Georgina and Michael) and how they perpetuate patriarchal, degrading structures for their own interest. Georgina and Michael are portrayed almost as Biblical figures, their exile from the restaurant like Adam and Eve being cast out of the Garden of Eden (the kitchen - with it's green colour showing how it is full of life and goodness) into a world of sin (a van filled with animal carcasses, reminiscent of Rembrandt's 'Slaughtered Ox' and the works that take inspiration from it, like Soutine's animal paintings). Michael specifically is shown as a Christ-like figure - he brings knowledge/intellect, is falsely called Jewish, is executed and then Spica is made to literally eat his body, like at communion. In conclusion, the portrayal of Spica as a brutish man who only wants more pleasure for himself critiques the 'nouveau riche' capitalists who gained wealth, not from any contribution to society, but by exploiting and abusing those lower than them. His mockery and murder of Michael (as a Christ-like figure) shows that they transgress moral and religious values to further themselves, possibly committing acts of violence to prove their fragile masculinity.

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hi. i really liked your queer 2024 edit and i kinda wanted to give it shot. i was wondering where you got the footage? would that be alright to ask?

i downloaded the movie from solidarity cinema's drive (https://www.solidaritycinema.com/), and then screenrecorded the clips. it’s a free library of films that you can either stream through plex or google drive, it's 100% safe and they have lots of other great movies on there as well :)

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(she’s a) universal emptiness/queer edit :)

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hey, that’s no way to say goodbye/midnight cowboy edit :)

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tv casualty/videodrome edit :)

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mean streets review (slight spoilers!!)

The atmosphere in Mean Streets is drenched in sin. From the hellish red lights of the seedy bar Charlie and his fellow low-level henchmen reside in - to the guilt that brings Charlie to burn himself as a reminder of the punishment of hell. Charlie, played by Harvey Keitel, is the nephew of a high-level, powerful mafioso; constantly torn between his life with the mafia - doing grunt work until he can hopefully inherit a restaurant - and his spirituality. At the beginning of the film, Charlie announces his philosophy on religion in the modern world, making up for his sins "in the streets", as shown through his friendship with Johnny Boy (Robert DeNiro) - taking him on as a sort of pet project, trying to help Johnny out of the constant debt he is stuck in, but also to try and help himself repent and make up for his sins. Despite this attempt to live a good life, it still fails, as his inability to choose a side leads to his downfall. He tries to follow the teachings of St. Francis (of Assisi), but never completely gives in: he doesn't live a simple life but wants more money and status; his almost mentorship of Johnny isn't just to help him, but to make himself feel better about the bad deeds he does; at the denouement of the film, the wound on his hand appears almost like a stigmata wound - which St. Francis received near the end of his life - however, this wound isn't a holy gift, but a result of his sins - showing both how his twisting and corrupting of Catholic teachings has resulted in his moral downfall, but also the violence at the root of (Catholic) Christianity. The misogyny in Catholicism is shown through the treatment of the female characters in the film - Teresa and Diane. Both women are sexualised, being conveyed as sexual objects for Charlie, with Teresa as someone he sleeps with, but refuses to admit love for (something that she wouldn't be given the privilege to do) and Diane as an unreachable object of attraction, with Charlie held back by the thought that being seen with a black woman would hurt his reputation. Charlie is forbidden from being in a relationship with Teresa as his uncle sees her as mentally ill due to her epilepsy - parallelling St. Teresa's presumed epilepsy initially being seen as hysteria by male doctors. The bar that the men meet up in has little to no women besides the employees, showing the hyper-masculine environment of the mafia. Throughout the film, it shows a realistic portrayal of what life in the mafia would be like - most people wouldn't be as powerful as Michael Corleone in The Godfather, released a year earlier, but would instead be running errands. The film is imbued with a sense of youthful energy, from the writing and acting of the characters to the soundtrack, mixing classic fifties songs and the rock and roll of the sixties and seventies. The title sequence begins with jump cuts zooming into Harvey Keitel's face (similar to a shot in Cleo From 5 to 7, immediately showing Scorcese's French New Wave influence) to the drums at the beginning of Be My Baby.

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promising young woman review (spoilers!!)

Despite a beautiful, candy-coated aesthetic, the story and writing of Promising Young Woman ultimately fall flat, with the ending attempting to subvert the rape-revenge genre, but instead becoming a de-empowering message showing that two women have to die for one man just to be arrested - which is even more baffling considering the film's critique of the justice system as misogynistic. This critique never issues any commentary on how black/transgender women are especially victimised, with the only black woman in the film (played by the brilliant Laverne Cox) supporting Cassie -to show another, happier side of her- rather than being a fully fledged character of her own. Nina, who, despite her rape and subsequent (implied) suicide being the entire reason Cassie enacts her revenge plot, is never fully expanded on; she appears mostly as an idea of a rape victim, with the only things Cassie says about her in her final monologue being that she was "smart", "funny" and "the top of her class", which are incredibly vague for people who had been close friends since childhood. Nina's assault is never shown, a deliberate subversion of traditional exploitation/revenge movies where the assault is usually shown in graphic detail. However, this subversion seems contradicted by Cassie's death, which shows her dressed as a stripper being brutally smothered to death for two and a half minutes. Although this is not technically misogynistic violence (as she is not actually a prostitute), it is still reminiscent of the many murders of sex workers - especially due to the references to 'The Night of the Hunter', where the homicidal antagonist complains about women, fantasising about killing a burlesque dancer. It also deals with questions of religious fanaticism which 'PYW' never does - the strict moral code of Christianity is especially strict towards women, however, despite being an examination of cultural misogyny and rape apology, 'PYW' never explores how religion is linked to this, even though it seeks to critique cultural misogyny. Despite the film's attempts not to be too preachy, the message seems a bit overdone in parts, with all the men Cassie lectures essentially saying the same thing. Where the film could have been more specific about how different elements of culture are misogynistic and how they intersect with other identities (like class or race), Fennell chooses to focus on the same area of white 'nice guys', which limits the film's critique. Despite its errors, the cinematography in 'PYM' is gorgeous, with a colour palette of reds/pinks and blues used throughout to show Cassie’s moral ambiguity - with a particular mid shot of her with a pastel blue halo behind her, invoking images of the Virgin Mary, sainthood and angels, contrasting with another scene where there is a red light behind her head, signifying how she is not just an “avenging angel” (as said by Fennell), but how her actions could also be considered evil. This would probably have more impact if she actually killed or harmed the men she encountered, rather than just lecturing them, as she did not do anything violent to anyone in the film - even when she attempts to harm Al Monroe, she does not end up hurting him. The only times she does anything morally ambiguous are when she confronts other women, both times making them think themselves/someone close to them was raped, which, although showing women’s complicity in misogyny, does not show any solidarity between women, unlike Ms. 45, another female revenge film where the woman protagonist only harms men, refusing to hurt another woman. 'PYM' is a beautifully shot film , with a well-intended, but ultimately shallow critique of cultural misogyny. Despite making some good points, it's message is heavily undermined by the ending, ending up more heavyhanded, 2010s girlboss feminism than a meaningful, layered examination of misogyny.