people who are into art films and haven't seen any Tarantino movies are absolutely fucking doing it wrong, aaaaaahhh
anyway speaking of art movies tomorrow I'm seeing A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, which looks like it has real Jim Jarmusch vibes while being its own thing (I really love Jim Jarmusch and you all should too). Here's the trailer, I'm psyched and you should see if you can find a screening if it looks interesting.
[/youtube]
EDIT:
I saw this, and it was really beautiful. The choice to shoot in black and white did amazing things for the visuals of the film, which takes place exclusively at night. The soundtrack was probably the most impressive part, it's full of
spaghetti western-inspired music and a bunch of underground Persian rock I kinda wish I'd had subtitles for. It's a very moody film, and it takes maybe a little while longer to linger than I'm usually interested in, but the soundtrack and the delicate little love story that blossoms were totally captivating. There's very little dialogue, collected mostly in a few scenes of confrontation or communion. I didn't really miss it.
It's a movie intimately about loneliness, and the spread of American pop culture, and feeling stuck in a dead town. Oh my god it's as slow as molasses, it's almost entirely style over substance, archetypes and mood over plot, and it was phenomenal. I really hope when it
comes out on iTunes soon more people see it.
Arash, an absurdly handsome James Dean type, is our main lens into Bad City, a dead refinery town. We open on him smoking a cigarette, all cool, and then he steals a cat. He has a vintage 50s Thunderbird. He worked 2,191 days to buy it. His father is addicted to heroin, and his mother is dead. His father owes Saeed, the heavily-tattooed dealer, money and Saeed takes Arash's car as a down payment. Arash smoulders. In another scene, he's late to buy his father's "medicine" because he met a girl. It's the Girl, from the title.
You've already seen Only Lovers Left Alive, right?
Anyway, Sheila Vand is the Girl, and she's outstanding. Her sheer presence alone carries half her scenes.
The Girl watches as Saeed angrily throws Atti, a prostitute, out of Arash's/his car. Later, after a meandering conversation with Atti (the first one she has in the movie) she kills him. Arash comes to demand his car back, and finds a corpse, a bloody pool, and a suitcase full of money and drugs. Flash forward a little and Arash is in a nightclub, dressed all emo in a cheap vampire costume (it's a costume night), selling E to the party girls he used to work as a gardener for. One of them remembers him, and makes him pop a molly too. He refuses but she is very insistent, and he goes along with it.
He's lost and doesn't know how to get home. He runs into the Girl again - she's in a chador and on a skateboard, and he is dollar store dracula. It's charming. She sees how helpless he is and takes him back too her apartment, where they dance to 80s Europop. This scene is spellbinding. Arash is away and Hossein, his father, is out of heroin and going into withdrawal. He becomes convinced that his dead wife's spirit is actually the cat Arash stole at the beginning of the movie, and trashes the little memorial Arash maintains in anger.
Arash kicks out his father. This is his end. The Girl kills him. A young boy sees it happen. Earlier, the Girl interrogates him, and asks him repeatedly if he's a good boy. She threatens to kill him if he's not, and warns him that she'll always be watching. Arash asks the boy if he knows who killed his father, and the boy says nothing. Arash buys a pair of beautiful earrings for the Girl, and gives them to her. Her ears aren't pierced. She pierces them as he looks away, with vampiric speed. They drive away with the cat, in his car, and he knows she killed his father.
========
Also I recently saw What We Do In The Shadows, which is another vampire movie, this time a mockumentary about urban New Zealand vampires from some Flight of the Conchords alums. It was really funny, and well shot, so if you liked Flight of the Conchords more than you like Iranian neo-noir see this one instead. Or both?
