Under the Skin (2013) by Jonathan Glazer

[cranefly]

Lady Cranefly and I both liked this, with some reservations. It's a very dark movie -- visually. There are so many night scenes, with the screen almost entirely black. If your TV has a setting for a brighter presentation, you might want to opt for that.

I felt that the movie was an incomplete idea. What was there was intriguing, but I felt somewhat shortchanged. There just wasn't quite enough development of characters, plot and ideas.

Still, we both found it very creepy.

[El Dingo]

I liked the first 30 minutes, and last 20 minutes, but the rest was just art-house meandering.

The concept was interesting, but the dialogue-less execution was self-indulgent.

[Drunk Monk]

More of a mood than a movie, but it did enough visionary things to keep me engaged.  Maybe it was the promise of nekkid Scar-Jo.  That would be very meta because she would then be luring her victims into that deep dark pool both on screen and off.  If this is to be watched, it must be late at night, when it's very quiet and dark.  It's a dark film just as cf said, so much blackness, so if you watched it in the mid-day, you'd hardly see anything.  

Odd fact - you never see the color black in a movie or on TV.  This is because black is the absence of color so you can't project that. It's just blank screen.  It's your mind that turns it black by the surrounding contrasting elements.  Find a 'black' spot on your monitor and isolate it and you'll see. It's an illusion.

Back to the movie, the sonorous soundtrack is also very quiet and subtle, and that would be lost with any competition noise.  I'm guessing there were some good subsonics if my TV system had some bass.  It's a slow burn, this film, quite literally - a creeping freeze and a submergence of slow surrender. There's a few really good twists and angles.  I liked that I could barely understand the Scottish. I liked its damp cold greenery and over dreariness. I liked Scar-Jo's alien dead pan, and her animation when seducing prey, and her nekkid scenes which were as tasteful as could be considering the film. I luved the kill scenes - so feckin surreal especially the under-black-stuff scene.  I felt the director was being vague and ambiguous intentionally although not as pompously as most of the art house fare.  There was indeed gratuitous meandering but it was intentional gratuitous meandering, meant to lull you into that black pool. The one you can't see.  Because it's an illusion.

I liked it overall.  I wouldn't recommend it to many, but I'd say give it a go to all of you here who haven't seen it because if you're patient enough, there are a few novel exploratory payouts.  It'd be a great film to watch at the end of a strung-out speed run - that slow final tweek out before the speed crash - not that I've been there personally, but I've been near enough to postulate. Then again, maybe it's just the ample nekkid Scar-Jo.

[cranefly]

I've been sorely tempted to revisit this, seeing it available on Netflix streaming -- which suggests it moved me more than my review might indicate.  There's of course the Scar-Jo nekkid draw, but I think it's the music, the atmosphere, that I want to revisit, and also all of Scar-Jo's chats with locals, who were non-actors, and the exchanges spontaneous.

[Drunk Monk]

Yeah, it's hung with me, which is always the mark of a good film in my mind.  Sure it had its flaws, but there was several aspects beyond nekkid Scar-Jo that were daring filmmaking.  A lot of it was shot with hidden cameras, which gives it genuine cinema verite, and the atmosphere and soundtrack really creep up on you late at night when all is quiet.  

I guess it got...

...under my skin.

FYI this makes a good pairing with Ex Machina (http://www.brotherhoodofdoom.com/doomFor...p?tid=3407) which also just popped up on Netflix.  It was one of those rare Netflix recommendations that really worked for me.