Every month, Establishing Shot brings you a selection of films from our group of regular bloggers. Even though these films aren’t currently being screened at the IU Cinema, this series reflects the varied programming that can be found at the Cinema and demonstrates the eclectic tastes of the bloggers. Each contributor has picked one film that they saw this month that they couldn’t wait to share with others. Keep reading to find out what discoveries these cinephiles have made, as well as some of the old friends they’ve revisited.
Jesse Pasternack, contributor | Infernal Affairs (2002)
Infernal Affairs is probably best known to western audiences as the film that Martin Scorsese remade into The Departed (2006). But this Hong Kong crime classic is excellent in its own right, especially in terms of its structure. While it may lack much of the dark comedy and quotable dialogue which help make The Departed so entertaining, it remains a brilliant film.
This movie is about two moles on different sides of the law. Lau Kin-Ming (Andy Lau) is a mole on the police force for crime boss Hon Sam (Eric Tsang). Chan Wing-yan (Tony Leung) is an undercover cop who has gained Hon’s trust. After a drug bust, both Hon and Lau are tasked by their respective bosses with finding the mole they each suspect has infiltrated their organizations. They race to do so as their efforts to live double lives weigh on them.
The greatest strength of Infernal Affairs is its quick pace. It is only 101 minutes long, 97 if you don’t include credits, and it makes every single one count. The story moves along at a fast clip, even as it finds time to give both main characters romantic subplots. If I were teaching a screenwriting class and had to show my students a film to learn the basics of structuring a script, I would show them this one.
But at the same time, this movie lacks a lot of the humor which makes The Departed so distinctive as well as something that I rewatch at least once a year. It doesn’t have its remake’s sense of darkly comedic, violent lunacy that could make you laugh and wince in the span of a few minutes. In addition, while many of the scenes in The Departed come straight from this movie (including such minor ones as Lau’s boss telling him about the virtues of marriage), screenwriter William Monahan and Scorsese’s cast gave them their own idiosyncratic dialogue which makes them unforgettable in a way this film never quite achieves.
Many people will probably always think of Infernal Affairs as the film that served as the source material for The Departed. But it has its own unique identity which helps make it a rewarding watch in and of itself. In addition, I imagine that watching this movie and its American remake back to back would be fascinating and go well with both films’ theme of doubling.
Michaela Owens, Editor | The Seventh Victim (1943)
Although October seemed to fly by in the blink of an eye and I barely made a dent in my Halloween watchlist, there is always one surefire way to get some spectacular spookiness into my busy schedule and that’s producer Val Lewton’s unmatched horror filmography, which mercifully is comprised of flicks that run around 70-80 minutes while still delivering plenty of thrills and chills. One of my favorite of these films is The Seventh Victim, which starts as a run-of-the-mill mystery before a sinister strangeness slowly seeps into its bones.
When a guileless young woman (Kim Hunter) tries to find her missing sister (Jean Brooks) in New York City, she discovers more questions than answers with every new tidbit she uncovers. The search swiftly becomes dangerous, though, when a private investigator helping Hunter is murdered, setting off a series of encounters that for a long time don’t make sense to either Hunter or the audience. Why did Brooks rent a room that only contains a chair and a noose dangling above it? What’s the deal with the sickly woman living next door to that room? What is that symbol Brooks left behind in a book? And what is going on with this movie’s connection to Dr. Louis Judd, a character played by the delightful Tom Conway who originally appeared in an earlier Lewton classic, Cat People, where he met a violent (and deserved) fate after trying to force himself on Simone Simon’s troubled protagonist?
Operating in the inky black shadows of an indifferent city, The Seventh Victim shows us the chilling normalcy of evil as we’re plunged further into the desperation of Brooks’s situation. Despite Hunter’s somewhat lifeless performance and the love triangle that is predictably shoehorned into the plot (even though Hunter has little chemistry with either man), the film’s quiet dread, startling visuals, and implied queerness, coupled with Brooks’s offbeat presence, make The Seventh Victim the kind of thing that lingers with you long after its unexpected final scene.
Noni Ford, contributor | Bob Trevino Likes It (2024)
I was lucky enough to attend a screening at the Heartland Film Festival in Indianapolis this month. The screening was for a film that came to Heartland after winning a slew of audience awards at a variety of other film festivals, including South by Southwest. The film, called Bob Trevino Likes It, follows the story of a young adult named Lily (Barbie Ferreira) who after a terrible fight with her dad befriends someone online with the same name as him (played by John Leguizamo). The odd connection soon develops into a friendship offline and leads Lily to begin developing more of a sense of self-worth and strength in regards to her abusive relationship with her biological father. The story is based on writer/director Tracie Laymon’s real-life experience and there’s a lot of warmth and love given to the characters.
Somedays it’s hard to imagine why we ever looked to the internet for human connection, especially as social media has become a more and more volatile space in the last decade. This movie was a nice change-up, and I really enjoyed the way it showed how human connection was still possible online. Also, as someone who has seen many “unlikely friendship” films that fall flat, it was nice to see such good actors portray the complexity of two people with nothing in common on paper finding ways to help each other out. So many people in my screening were audibly gasping at some of the more pitiful scenes where Barbie Ferreira grovels for even a little bit of consideration from the people in her life (the first scene of the film is very relatable and devastating). For Ferreira to take her character through a full transformation of placating to confident was no small feat and she did it well. John Leguizamo in his role as the other Bob Trevino similarly had a lot of ground to cover to show the shifts in his character in both his work and personal life over the course of his friendship with Lily. It was a well-written story that packed so much character growth into it, it’s no wonder it won film festival audiences over. As soon as the “Welcome to Indiana” sign appeared on screen near the tail-end of the film, the resounding cheer from the crowd in my theatre showed it had clearly won this audience over too.
Chris Forrester, contributor | Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
The last thing you’d expect of a Frankenstein movie is the big green guy learning the joys of smoking and drinking, and yet one of the many macabrely humorous and genuinely touching passages of James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein (1935) concerns just that: Boris Karloff’s Monster befriending a blind man and blasting cigs like there’s no tomorrow. The real beauty of the film — and it is beautiful — is in its strange ability to have its cake and eat it, too; it’s both an elegant Classic Hollywood monster movie and a winkingly self-aware riff on one, finding room even amidst its sly silliness for bouts of supreme earnestness. One such moment is, yes, the friendship that gives rise to the monster’s love of tobacco and booze, but more broadly, the film locates via a distinctly queer subtext and sensibility the inherent loneliness of the other.
And then there’s the matter of the way it looks and moves and breathes, which is its own show-stopping beast (or monster, if you will). Whale — who, sorry(!), I’ve never thought of as an especially elegant filmmaker visually — stages nearly every passage with an exceptional eye for composition and movement, never so daunted by the goofiness of the film’s tone as to deny it the most supreme elegance. The result is a film that feels just right on every level, with such a feeling of cohesion, even where one feels unexpected: alternately spooky, funny, gorgeous, sad, and touching, and with a slew of perfectly pitched performances and terrific visual effects.