Rabbit, rabbit. Happy May Day! It occurred to me only after the fact that I seem to have celebrated Walpurgisnacht this year.
The film I had to bolt for at the end of my marathon review of Johnny Eager (1942) was Oz Perkins' The Blackcoat's Daughter (2015), showing last night at the Brattle Theatre as part of IFFBoston. I liked it quite a lot and it is impossible to discuss any aspect of its effectiveness without extensive spoilers; even its genre is not apparent from its early scenes. The people who sat behind me were not very impressed with it, but that's all right, because I was not very impressed with their critical abilities. ( Sound good? ) It's not a flawless movie, but it's a risky, powerful one. I didn't realize until I got home and was searching for a soundtrack album that The Blackcoat's Daughter made its first round of festival showings under the title February. I don't know the reasons for the change, but I find the later title more evocative, as well as more in keeping with the theme of parents and children to which almost every interaction in the script resonates. It's intelligently written, oblique without being obfuscatory. Nothing in the painterly, atmospheric narrative would hold together on more than an aesthetic level without the acting of Kiernan Shipka, Lucy Boynton, and Emma Roberts, all of whom I will be watching out for in future. The score is by Elvis Perkins and I hope it becomes commercially available. I will certainly watch whatever Oz Perkins does next. This winter's chill brought to you by my waiting backers at Patreon.
The film I had to bolt for at the end of my marathon review of Johnny Eager (1942) was Oz Perkins' The Blackcoat's Daughter (2015), showing last night at the Brattle Theatre as part of IFFBoston. I liked it quite a lot and it is impossible to discuss any aspect of its effectiveness without extensive spoilers; even its genre is not apparent from its early scenes. The people who sat behind me were not very impressed with it, but that's all right, because I was not very impressed with their critical abilities. ( Sound good? ) It's not a flawless movie, but it's a risky, powerful one. I didn't realize until I got home and was searching for a soundtrack album that The Blackcoat's Daughter made its first round of festival showings under the title February. I don't know the reasons for the change, but I find the later title more evocative, as well as more in keeping with the theme of parents and children to which almost every interaction in the script resonates. It's intelligently written, oblique without being obfuscatory. Nothing in the painterly, atmospheric narrative would hold together on more than an aesthetic level without the acting of Kiernan Shipka, Lucy Boynton, and Emma Roberts, all of whom I will be watching out for in future. The score is by Elvis Perkins and I hope it becomes commercially available. I will certainly watch whatever Oz Perkins does next. This winter's chill brought to you by my waiting backers at Patreon.
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