In short: 88 (2015)

Gwen (Katharine Isabelle), suddenly finds herself in one of those archetypical US diners in the middle of nowhere. She has no idea how she got there, and doesn’t seem to be too sure who she is either. Parts of that will come back in a series of disjointed, out of order flashbacks to two different points in time when she seems to have been two very different persons – the rather mild-mannered version remembering this again, and a pretty damn murderous woman on a killing spree calling herself “Flamingo”.

Apparently, much of the violence has to do with taking vengeance on her former boss, psychotic drug lord Cyrus (Christopher Lloyd) for the death of the love of her life Aster (Kyle Schmid). Things get messy and violent in every one of the film’s timelines.

There is obviously quite a bit of Memento in the DNA of April Mullen’s film, but where Nolan’s film was very strictly structured, 88 is often confusing and disjointed. That’s not bad filmmaking, I believe, but rather a conscious decision by Mullen and screenwriter Tim Doiron (who also plays a supporting role on screen) to let the film mirror the shattered psyche of its protagonist, leaving the viewer often just as confused by the way things in her world and in her personality hang together as she is for most of the film. Mullen’s visual style adds to this feeling, giving everything a woozy and unreal quality that works well for what she’s doing here, at least for my taste, and also helps keep up a certain pulpy energy.

Isabelle is pretty great, too, providing a visual and personal anchor to proceedings, at once playing three – Gwen I and Gwen II are not perfectly consistent with one another – very different characters yet signalling clearly who is who while also showing a coherent emotional core.

Three Films Make A Post: A NEW - AND GREAT - MICKEY ROONEY!

Kronos (1957): Kurt Neumann's movie has some rather interesting ideas and features a lovely cubist giant monster, but gets dragged down again and again by an inability to escape the conventions of 50s SF/horror movies. The film is far from being an unwatchable mess but I find it rather irritating when a movie shies away from using its full degree of imagination (something a movie concerning a giant, energy-sucking robot thing surely possesses, particularly one that's casting Morris Ankrum as a psychiatrist instead of a general) only to follow genre conventions that are just not very interesting. If you're able to watch the film that's actually there, and have a tolerance for this sort of thing, you'll probably enjoy yourself enough, though, because Neumann and co surely are competent at what they are doing.

American Mary (2012): This, on the other hand, is on quite a different quality level. Unfortunately, Jen and Sylvia Soska's film is one of those films I don't really have to say anything of interest about, apart from obvious stuff like "it's really fantastic" and "is Katherine Isabelle great here, or what!?", so you know, it's really fantastic, and Katharine Isabelle is particularly great in it.

Il Prato Macchiato Di Ross aka The Bloodstained Lawn (1973): Riccardo Ghione's horror-based satire on the doubtful charms of the bourgeoisie suffers from a rather sluggish pace, a lack of actual incisive satire, and a certain lack of imagination in its direction. It's a bit of a shame too, because whenever Ghione (also responsible for the screenplay) manages to move his eye from the obvious towards the weird, his film awakens to life. It's too bad that a rather tepid and soft-footed approach dominates the film, for in the hands of someone more (intellectually and visually) daring, this could have been quite the film. As it stands, it's a somewhat interesting curio.

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