Rebecca (1940)

Rebecca is a film about a young girl who meets a rich widower who falls in love with her while they're both in France, and then takes her home with him. When they get there, the young girl discovers that the late Mrs. De Winter, the man's first wife, is far from forgotten, and haunts everything and everyone at the great estate she is now the mistress of.

The new Mrs. De Winter is a timid girl and, after her whirlwind romance, is quite unprepared for the aristocratic life that she's signed on for. She can't quite seem to get used to the servants and the large house and the routine of a 'great lady', or at least can't do it in the way the late Mrs. De Winter, Rebecca, did it. In fact, she's bombarded with traces of Rebecca from the moment she first walks into the manor. Rebecca's initials are embroidered on everything, and the housekeeper, who seemed to have had a very strong attachment to Rebecca, always looks at her with a stern, almost disapproving gaze as she directs her in following Rebecca's footsteps. Her new husband, Maxim, also seems very distant, increasingly so as the pair get to know each other better. She feels like everyone is comparing her to the beautiful, intelligent, genteel Rebecca, and are finding her sadly lacking. What exactly are the details surrounding poor Rebecca's death? Will the new mistress ever find happiness in her new home, or win the love of her new husband? Will the memory of Rebecca haunt her and every other person in the house for eternity? Who knows!!

This was an amazing film. It was two hours long and I was enthralled from the get go. The acting was really well done. Our protagonist emotes such a nervous energy from the beginning of the film, and it morphs wonderfully into a stronger self-assuredness as the film nears its end and as she grows more confident in who she in and how she fits in to her situation. The way Rebecca was portrayed was also very well done. Even though we never once see her image nor are told directly or in great detail about her life, we are subtly made to know her character and traces of her are in almost every scene, and yet not enough to satisfy us. Just enough information about her is provided so as to ensure that the viewer is aware of her distinct importance and impact, but not enough to know in what regard, sparking wild curiosity. The cinematography was also very well done. At one point in the story as Mr. De Winters is reminiscing about Rebecca, the camera is aimed at a couch as he remembers the situation, and then it moves as though Rebecca is there and the camera is following her actions, but there's no one there. You can actually get into Maxim's mind's eye as he remembers, and are forced to imagine the memory he's sharing. Usually that kind of experience is reserved for books, or even radio, as flashbacks are typically shown in film leaving little to the imagination. Everything about Rebecca had to be imagined by the audience, which is what I think makes this film so special. It crosses a threshold in that respect and is truly a piece of art. It makes film not only something to idly watch, but something you can actually interact with and can put your own imagination to work. Brilliant.

This is a wonderful film full of suspense, romance, and mystery. I highly recommend it.

Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door (2007)

This is one of those traumatizing movies that you wish you had never seen because you can't get the images out of your head, but at the same time, couldn't tear your eyes away from the horror as it was happening. Warning, not for youth or the easily disturbed.

This majority of this film is told via a flashback of one summer a man named David had in his childhood. David lived in a normal, suburban neighbourhood in the 50's. He was an only child, but got along well with and spent a lot of time with the other boys in his neighbourhood, especially his next door neighbours, a group of boys living with their single mother, Ruth. David's life changed forever the summer that two girls moved into the house next door. Their parents were both killed in a car crash (the younger sister was crippled and required leg braces) and Ruth was their next of kin. The girl's name is Meg and David is taken with her from the moment he lays eyes on her.

David tries to get inconspicuously closer to Meg, but as he spends more time at his neighbour's house, he sees more and more tension between Meg and her Aunt Ruth. At first it's small things like making snide comments about her 'delicate womanhood' or implying that she's a slut. David can tell there is tension, but it just seems uncomfortably out of place, they're just words after all. Things change when one day David comes over and sees Meg's cousins tickling her and one of them touches her breast. The tickling was unwanted, but after the touch Meg shoved the boy to the floor, who then went to tell his mother. Here Ruth starts being physical, but not to Meg. She instead beats Meg's younger sister, who is crippled, as a punishment to Meg. Subtle but severe power struggles such as this continue between Ruth and Meg, Meg having no choice but to succumb to Ruth in order to save her sister. A few days later at an outing, Ruth's boys spot Meg speaking with a police officer who stops by the house to check up on the situation, and here is where it gets a bit uncomfortable. Ruth feels that for her own safety, she must now be much more severe with Meg, which means ordering that Meg be tied up in the basement, hanging from the ceiling. At first, she is just left there, not given enough food, bruises and rope-burns covering her body, but it of course escalates. David watches, horrified, while all of this is going on. He feels that he can't do anything to stop it, that no one would believe him if he were to tell, and yet he doesn't want to abandon Meg. At one point, when she's half destroyed, he sneaks down into the basement and releases her, but instead of running to her freedom, she is caught once again by trying to take her sister away with her. This is where the other half of her gets worked on. Will Meg ever escape? Will David be able to save her? Do you want to know badly enough to risk seeing these images that may never leave you... in the worst sense possible?

I have mixed feelings about this film. It was definitely well done, lets start with that. The acting, cinematography, storytelling; all good. The subject matter however, is really uncomfortable. Throughout the film, the neighbourhood boys are all portrayed as either having these mean tendencies, or not caring enough about another human being to go against the crowd. In fact, excluding David, the boys are all quite taken with the idea of having Meg tied up in the basement, and practically jump over each other to carry out their mother's twisted orders. The other kids from the neighbourhood are no better. There's one scene, the worst one, where a whole bunch of kids come and watch/ help carry out the atrocities done to Meg. Boys and girls come to watch. Ruth is also a really twisted person, which is revealed ever more so as the film progresses. We aren't given much of a back story on her, but it's almost as if she's dead inside and tries kill what light she can see in others. There is physical, sexual, emotional, and psychological abuse in this film. Every so often, I look for psychologically disturbing films. It's something that just morbidly fascinates me, the idea of insanity, or the lengths someone will go to harm someone else, or the motivation behind such actions, or how someone could actually endure something like that. Well on that front this film delivers... too well.

The most disturbing thing about this film is that it's based on a true story. There was a real girl named Silvia Likens who endured some of the same atrocities as were displayed in the film, worse in fact. An American Crime, with Ellen Page, is another film dealing with this case and it retells the story in a way that is closer to the actual events. It is a little more tame in comparison with this, and maybe the go to film if you still want to hear the story without the potential psychological scarring.

If you're in that mood, I recommend this film, but if not... then you probably won't enjoy it, and that might be an understatement.

Hansel and Gretel (2007)

I have to start off by admitting to not watching a lot of Korean produced media... this actually might be the first one I've watched, so that's where I'm coming from.

So the story takes its main elements from the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale, but some of the details are kind of twisted around. The main character is a guy with a sick mother and a pregnant girlfriend. He's on the road to visit his mother in the hospital when he has a fight with his girlfriend on the phone and ends up flipping his car over the side of the road into the forest. When he wakes up it's night-time and he has pretty bad cuts on his head, a strange girl also discovers him and leads him back to her house where he can rest for the night. When he gets to the house in the woods (called the house of happy children or something) he meets a very weird family consisting of a mother, a father, and three children. They all seem creepily happy, but there's something a little bit off. The parents show subtle signs of great anxiety bordering on fear, and the children seem to be almost acting out what they feel a happy family should be like. Another weird thing about this place is that his requests to be lead out of a mysteriously confusing forest are always pushed aside or ignored. Then one day the parents 'go out' for the day and never come back. A different couple is found walking through the woods, are brought back to the house, and seem to eerily fill the place the parents did. The guy, who they now refer to as uncle, watches in horror as all of this happens. As he wanders around the house and interacts with the kids a little more, he begins to uncover some disturbing secrets, confirming that these kids aren't at all what they seem to be, and neither is the place he's stuck in. The kids in turn also seem to grow more and more attached to him, making the possibility of his ever escaping them seem slimmer by the day. Will he ever find his way out!?

It's supposed to be a horror, but it is more suspenseful than anything else. There are some deviations from the original story. The main character is some 20-something guy instead of the children, and it is he that gets lost in the forest, not they. In fact it is the children and only the children who seem to be able to find their way around the forest, everyone else get's lost and always ends up back at the house. Also, there is no witch in the traditional sense. There is magic which is being manipulated, but it's not by any old woman. Breadcrumbs are used though, and there is some abuse. All in all it was actually pretty well done and is worth the watch.

I actually watched this whole thing on YouTube, it might be amongst the suggested videos listed with the trailer.

 

Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey

This book about about a girl who was born with the mark of a god on her and the story basically follows her life and the trouble she faces because of this mark.
 
The girl is intelligent and she uses her intellect as her weapon. I'd classify this series as an adventure, but Phedre doesn't 'fight'. In fact when she's in physical trouble someone has to go save her and she can't really help herself, but that's not to say that she's a wilting heroine. She earns her own respect by acting on her own and overcomes situations by using her brain. quite the odd heroine by the norm's standards.
 
The author's pretty good with words and has done a bit of research (winning combination). Many things in the novel have a real world reference.
 
It's adventurous, erotic and suspenseful, and I'd say one of those stories you'd call epic. It's around 900 pages, but you'll get through it and be grateful you went through the trek.

Sisters Of The Sword by Maya Snow

This book was surprisingly good. I wouldn't say that I was surprised by the material, because you can get a pretty good idea of what to expect from the plot by reading the summary, kind of a Mulan/ Alanna series (Tamora Peirce) story about a girl who rises out of the stereotypical female role and sort of blurs the boundary we so readily assign to gender association. And this story is a good one, but because it's so over done there is a huge potential for failure. This book however, did not fail.
 
First off I have to say that I'm somewhat impressed. This is a story about two young girls dealing with the death of their father and brothers, and there is actually evidence of violence. It is a children's book so of course there is nothing too graphic, but it is no max and ruby! You fear for the characters and the suspense your fear creates because they could actually get hurt really increases the anticipation. The story makes you want to feel things basically :P but again, this is a novel for children. I picked it up in the 9 - 12 section of the book store and I'd say the subject matter is handled in a way appropriate for that age. More often than not, though danger is close at hand, the girls are spared what would be a scary scene (and what would have been added in the adult version of the novel with more gore and blood) leaving only a handful of actual encounters wherein they are confronted with an unpleasant confrontation.
 
The main characters Kimi and Hana were great as well. The story wasn't so much about how they 'beat the system', how they showed everyone that girls can do whatever boys can. It was a better story, side stepping that superficial attempt at feminism. It was about inner strength and fighting your own demons with what you've got. And yes, Kimi wants to be a samurai like nothing else, but the focus of the story is on how she reacts with strength and courage when such a bad thing has happened to her and her family. She uses her desire to become a samurai to move forward, to avenge her family, but her reason of existence isn't to prove that she can. She knows she can. Her purpose is acknowledge her ability, nurture it, and then use it to best accomplish what she desires.
 
The book ended... like a beginning, so I assume this is the beginning of some sort of series. And this is a novel written for children, but that I'm 20 yr old university student and still enjoyed it says something, I think, about the author's talent for storytelling. It was a well written book with a good story and great characters. I look forward to a continuation.

 

Goth by Otsuichi

I really enjoyed this manga, it's one of my favourites. It has something of a morbid story line, focused around various cases of murder... but I wouldn't say it's primarily a murder mystery. There is definitely that aspect to the story, but because the main characters react as they do to these murders.. well lets say that the death helps to set the mood of the story more than drive plot (at the beginning of the story anyways). Both main characters have some connection to an obsession to death and are drawn to various morbid activity throughout the story. There is only one or two really graphic pictures, for the most part it's just the concepts that are kind of gruesome, and because of that the subject matter isn't as repulsive as it would be if the story was all guts and gore. It's more intriguing that repulsive, and in a dark kind of way you always want to know what happens next.
 
Something else that's kind of interesting about this story is how the character relationships are set up. I'll start of by saying in no way is this a romance... it's the opposite, but the way in which the characters relate to each other in conjunction with how the story progresses is reminiscent of a romance. The two main characters are a boy and a girl, the story is mostly narrated by the boy though, the girl always seems distant in this sense, as if we're watching her. Even the part where the girl is telling us about her past we see her through her eyes as something foreign... so we never really get into her head.
 
The boy is obsessed with death though. He was first drawn to the girl because he wanted to kill her (or wanted her hands), and for the rest of the story the girl and boy are what one could consider as friendship. Throughout the story though he's interested in her death, not plotting it per say, but interested in the possibility. The girl always seems to attract people who want to kill her and the boy always shows up, and at one part fights someone because he wants to be the one to kill her. It is kind of like a romance in that the boy is so obsessed with the girl, or the part of the story the readers are shown he is anyway... but just to restate, this isn't a romance.
 
The art is pretty nice and goes with the over all mood. I'm glad it's getting published in English.