Under the Skin (2014) dir. Jonathan Glazer

no thread for this divisive masterpiece?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoSWbyvdhHw

this is the first new film i'm excited about for a while

a grand statement on what it means to be a human being?
no, thanks

^^^probably liked the lego movie

Really looking forward to seeing this, but it doesn't seem to be showing anywhere local, dammit!

I saw it this morning. For the first half or so, I found myself wishing that I didn't know Glasgow, and didn't know about use of guerrilla filming. It took me out of the film too much - spotting locations and thinking about the mechanics of shooting it, and who was unsuspecting and who was not. But I got over that, as the film moved out of that phase. At least two unforgettable scenes, for me, and I want to go back and see it again very soon, maybe on a bigger screen than the one I saw it on today – I want it to overwhelm me more. But first I've got to rewatch both parts of Nymphomaniac. 2014 has started very well for me.

The trailer gives an excellent sense of the whole film, by the way. Those sounds are at the heart of it.

Am trying to think of other film-makers who got more progressively more avant-garde with with their first three features.

is "guerrilla filming" the big conceit here? wondering what makes this film "divisive."

I don't know. Often I only hear about films being divisive through articles saying their divisive. Apparently it got booed by some at Toronto, or something, and I did read today someone quoting someone in the Independent who called it a "laughably bad alien hitchhiker movie" back then. But I've not actually read anyone slag it off myself.

i'm only getting the term from number-none's original post ("divisive masterpiece").

I have found that review.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/reviews/film-review-under-the-skin--even-scarlett-johansson-cant-save-jonathan-glazers-laughably-bad-alien-hitchhiker-movie-8796596.html

It is stupid and its point about the film ignoring ethnic minorities in Glasgow quite baffling.

Yeah, it's not just number-none saying that – it's a word that's been attached to the film in the media.

Ugh – "their divisive" = "they're divisive" above.

loved this! had been looking fwd to it for a long time, totally lived up to expectations

This looks interesting and I can't wait to enjoy it _and_ the Lego movie

I'd like to hear the opinion of someone who though Birth was bleh

I really liked Birth up until the neat tying-up at the end, so that's not me.

I liked Birth a lot, but have never understood the reverence for Sexy Beast, which I found to be basically a ridiculous farce. This new movie sounds really bad.

Sexy Beast was a good larf tho; never took it as more.

sexy beast is a pretty sweet flick, w/3 really great and vv different performances occupying the center. lots of ridiculousness there, true.

sexy beast was the first time i saw ian mcshane in anything and he was terrifying

yeah mcshane struck a good balance in the film of being utterly scary and perpetually bemused and coldly but fairly logical.

man i just don't know if I can credit this film with being not -awful

For the first half or so, I found myself wishing that I didn't know Glasgow

well i saw this yesterday in Glasgow, then afterwards walked round many of the locations seen in the film, and there was something very exciting and unusual abt this slippage between the screen and the real, for me.

loved this, slower, more abstract than i was expecting, but really haunting, and a film where you cld easily be ambushed by unexpected emotion. haven't seen glazer's other two movies, but here i admired his brass balls/confidence in treating the material in this way (as someone said to me, "the plot sounds just like Species")

Seeing this at the GFT tomorrow. Haven't been as excited for a film in a long while.

I loved this too, although I wonder if being a stranger in Glasgow gave it some added resonance for me. I did prefer the first half to the second half although that seems to be the case with 9 out of 10 films I see recently. And yeah, there were 2 or 3 scenes which blew me away.

Saw it for a second time today. I was able to relax more in the early scenes, but am even more convinced that it's the section from when she picks up the man with neurofibromatosis through to the sex scene that's the dizzyingly great peak of the film.

like is it a sad sack sex scene with canon in d playing or a pisstake of same, and either way how do you reconcile not seeing it as awful with considering yourself an adult

loved this

Are you calling me a child for liking that scene, thomp, or have I misunderstood your post?

this looks like complete trash, only skimmed the anthony lane profile of ScarJo+review of this in latest New Yorker and threw the magazine across the room.

I should say pretentious trash

but maybe I'm wrong, guess I'll never know...

This will be my favorite movie of the year but for the buttsex in Stranger by the Lake.

but have you seen nymphomaniac?

lots of sex to choose from

Top 3's gonna be pretty sexy.

(4?)

Stranger by the Lake, Under the Skin and Nymphomaniac actually are the best three new films I've seen this year.

Think I've reached my 2014 cock quota now.

Wait til you see the Godzilla reboot and why what made the hole in that skyscraper may surprise you.

stranger by the lake opens here tonight, am psyched for cinematic cock.

although i get the feeling there may be some walkouts by older folk who "went to see that new French movie"

I wonder if the theater is even aware that real! homosexual! fellatio! is happening on one of their screens.

The scotch-guarding will tip you off.

not sure why certain people are so eager to damn this sight unseen. Possibly they're just idiots

people who don't share your opinions are idiots

i'm damning it sight seen. that's because it's a really stupid movie

people who share my opinions are idiots

i get a whiff of glazer trying to do the whole french-cinema-of-extremity thing a decade late

wronger than ever

I found this kind of disappointing. V enjoyable in many places, but overall the same kind of long slow shots in lieu of much of anything new, that I'm getting a little bored of. I saw it in the same cinema I saw Upstream Color so I think that has affected my take on it slightly (had a similar reaction to that).

v scared of this

Loved hearing all the strong Glasgow accents talking to Scarlett Johansson - though I instinctively think of Limmy (how ace would that've been, in the club scene)

for a moment i thought you mentioned lemmy

So the script development with this was like:

'what would it be like if Scarlett Johansson walked around a shopping centre?'

'what would it look like if Scarlett Johansson watched Tommy Cooper?' (genuinely awesome, that's what)

etc etc.

There was certainly an undercurrent of displaying a disgrace at the way men behave and conduct themselves in regards to women. Not that its gonna stop Scarlett - its sorta like a distant cousin of Story of O or Maitresse with the SF/Species angle and then all the walking and driving around with nowhere to go was a hint of Patrick Keiller too? It hints at those things without taking anything too far which is perhaps for the best.

Interested in reading the novel its based on - no time right now.

i enjoyed the novel, that's pretty much the only reason i want to see this (just to see how they approached it).

It has very little to do with the novel

really wanted to love this but found it underwhelming. its like they boiled it down to its most basic essence so far that all that was left was not actually all that much. found the switching between gritty uk realism and the sci fi sequences to not be all that consequential, though the mix did remind me of holy motors quite a bit. SJ is brilliant, but id have liked her to have just a little more to do. i think everyone going ape over this just wants to back something that isnt easy to like, but im not sure it was worth the wait exactly - its not a failure, but not a masterpiece either. shame cos i liked sexy beast and birth a lot - glazers an interesting director, but after all the hype, i just expected more than a microbudget slice of kitchen sink scottish sci fi. in fact, i wish all the 'interesting' films this year werent so hyped, id probably have liked her, and this one, a bit more, if i hadnt heard so much about them before. it does have some great scenes, but as a whole, its just a bit hmmmm.

also couldnt help feeling dissapointed that all the realisations that SJ's alien came to were all so familiar for anyone whos watched even a few of these aliens-on-earth kind of films. the arthouse treatment of that did make this a bit different, but not THAT different. felt the film didnt really have much to say - it was the style that made this novel, a bit like birth in a way, as the 'dead-person-in-someone-elses-body' thing had been done before that film too, but it was the icy space of it that made it feel different. bit tired of directors thinking empty space alone can excuse paucity of new ideas though.

i agree with all of that except that i don't think SJ was brilliant

though if she wasn't i don't think it was her fault

this was basically a film that could have come out on warp films. i wish someone had told me this before i went to see it, as i was expecting some sort of coldly sublime kubrickian sci-fi, not a film about how its grim up in scotland, with some vaguely rendered outsider perspective to put that point across. also found the score interesting and effective, but never as haunting/fear-inducing as some reviews seem to have made out. it was a bit too measured and subtle. the whole thing should have been MUCH scarier/eerier.

for some reason, i kept thinking of trash humpers while watching this. i think it was the horrific mindlessness of the beach scene (which still makes me uncomfortable).

how does this compare to Morvern Callar?

in terms of boobs?

i would say MC is the superior film

I read this book around the same time I saw Morvern Callar, I think, and always envisioned Emily Watson in this role. And wasn't Lynne Ramsay attached to this at some point? Maybe not. Anyway if this comes out in the US I'm sure I'll see it. I actually kind of hated the book when I read it.

thought this was genuinely incredible, beautiful. "ambushed by unexpected emotion" is correct. and i left the cinema woozily looking at glaswegians like they were aliens. a totally unique experience, overall.

Absolutely with you jed! Went to see this tonight at Cineworld and was utterly stunned by it.

as i was expecting some sort of coldly sublime kubrickian sci-fi, not a film about how its grim up in scotland, with some vaguely rendered outsider perspective to put that point across.

So what were you watching? Seriously it was never that grim in a gritty way unless it wanted to be (the kids coming up to SJ). I loved the landscapes and Glasgow in the daytime.

Don't think it was that SF either. Like it hints at things without being anything which doesn't automatically translate to nothing.

Kubrick is dead. Stop it.

I would have happily watched an entire film like the first 5 minutes of this, but then it turned into Killer Of Neds, oh well.

krakow, maybe we were at the same screening? 5pm at cineworld?

one thing i loved about this was seeing nightclub scenes that totally conveyed the feeling of being in one.

Yep, I was there too. Never spotted you in the gloom. Really glad to have caught it at the cinema, just before it disappears.

It wasn't alone in being so, but the beach scene was horrifying and bleak.

Any other Glaswegians get excited during the walking around Glasgow bits because they were hoping that they'd spot themselves? Because I was

I was hoping I wouldn't. Actually I wonder how they did this, logistically, especially with the ones who had speaking parts who must have signed off rights afterwards to being used in a film, no?

Yes, and Glazer's said there was some great stuff they couldn't use because people wouldn't sign the release form.

the first guy she speaks to is brilliant. you knew he was real because he was calling Asda "Azda's" which is a detail no writer would pick up. Apart from Limmy, maybe.

[Most of her "victims", who are chatted up by Johansson, and enticed to come and sit in her Transit van, aren't actors, but Jonathan Glazer says "they were talked through what extremes they would have to go to if they agreed to take part in the film once they understood what we were doing.

http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-26559813

This threw me – what extremes did he mean? Were some of the nude scenes done with people they'd picked up in the street? On first viewing I'd assumed not.

yes that's a bit hard to believe. The Celtic scarf guy is so good that it's hard to believe he's acting but on the other hand surely he wouldn't just be a random bloke who thereafter signed up to doing a crazy scene (complete with erection!) of him walking into something like black oil.

The nightclub guys is definitely an actor though - i think he was in The Angel's Share.

"This isn't Tescos is it?"

I got told the guy in the Celtic scarf was an actor from the Neds film. I thought he was real when I saw it. I had seen that guy who wanted to go to Tesco on tv several times. There were only 3 victims, right? So I don't think any of the guys who were successfully lured were just total unknowns.

love this movie:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089489/

never saw this one:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114508/

only bringing them up because i can't believe they haven't been already!

haha Species is so bad. Lifeforce is pretty bad too but effects and overall insanity make it worth it. I haven't seen this yet but surely Liquid Sky is some kind of precedent as well?

Really enjoyed this, although like Alba upthread it took me a while to stop being affected by the familiarity of the Glasgow locations, especially after SJ picks up her first guy two minutes' walk from my house.

The sequence where we see the guy under the black goop, reaching out to touch the other dissolving victim, will stay with me for a long time. The sound effects and the visuals of the deep blue nothingness surrounding them, followed by the skin twisting and floating like a discarded plastic bag... really haunting.

Loved the way the Highlands looked, and the final shot of the smoke dissipating in the snowstorm was gorgeous.

Watched this again yesterday and agree. The final shot was aiming at Tarkovsky and the like, doesn't begin to match him but its aiming for the stars.

I actually love her transition from alien to...something else - the way her chatter improved with punters to her gentle tap to music but ups and downs - she had to spit out the most gorgeous piece of cake - but I suppose if you compare that w/the Alien in Starman...its different there as he inhabits more of a body not skin but still his assimilation is too quick. He eats a cheery pie when he is nearly dying and enjoys it, doesn't scan..

The final image immediately made me think of the title of a James Tiptree Jr story, 'Her Smoke Rose Up Forever'. Also thought it might be a referencing the last shot of Ugetsu Monogatari.

This would be a great double-bill with The Man Who Fell to Earth.

this was great I thought, and genuinely fucked with my senses (mainly aural but also empathy) for a few hours after.

read a few reviews now, and a number of them say she becomes "humanised" as a consequence of picking up Adam Pearson. Reacted v strongly against this, tho am not sure if I was right to do so. it appears to feel some sort of empathy for someone themselves isolated by human society (but this only humanising if we assume empathy to be a uniquely human characteristic), there is a crisis, possibly born of solitude, in front of the mirror where it appears to be trying to distinguish the qualities of insect/human in itself, then an unsuccessful period where it escapes from its obscure bondage, and attempts to learn some human behaviour (the emotionless finger tapping is a great example). There is an attempt to give what it has learned men want in return for protection/kindness it has received.

I think what I reacted to is the notion that "she" (most reviews seem to take that literally at face value) becomes better thru the film.

the scene at the end where it contemplates its mask uncomprehendingly ("Is *this* what they all wanted? what all the violence and fear and death was for?") is wonderful.

Triple bill with TMWFTE and ET imo. and maybe Frankenstein's Monster and Hittite Man by The Fall (I liked the suggestion of a peat bog human in the form, and pagan death rite).

the scene at the end where it contemplates its mask uncomprehendingly ("Is *this* what they all wanted? what all the violence and fear and death was for?") is wonderful.

Didn't quite know what to make of this. 'It' doesn't look like it could have much expression(?) Was it contemplative? I loved that her eyes were still moving even after the face was disengaged from its body.

yeah, I did feel I was pushing it in too much of one direction there - part if why the film is so good is the blankness. and yep, the face still moving is a great touch.

read a few reviews now, and a number of them say she becomes "humanised" as a consequence of picking up Adam Pearson.

I really liked this until the final act, and even then not sure what I think. the "humanization" seems pat (if that's what's going on...or is she just playing at having desires?) but yeah the ending was tarkovsky-esque, or even maybe bresson! and I think you can guess which bresson I'm thinking of.

more like besson amirite

luc? xp DAMMIT

you guys

I think you can guess which bresson I'm thinking of.

Robert?

I saw this last night, and liked it; finely crafted etc. Buttttttt... Somebody on L'boxd how ultimately there is no mystery -- it's utterly straightforward in a sort of "plot-delivery" way. Great cake scene tho.

Because of logistics I went to the Wburg 'Drafthouse'-style theater where ppl are eating throughout, and those places can go die.

My sense was that she was playing at having desires to see if any of them worked for her and whether she could 'choose' to be human. Clearly cake and sex don't turn out to hold a great deal of appeal. The fact that she turns out not to be a human (I'd wondered if she had somehow taken over a human body) but instead wearing a disguise makes me wonder what, if anything, her race actually do for pleasure.

I do wonder what I'd make of the film if I hadn't been aware of the book.

lot of wonder there, sorry

haha I meant au hasard balthazar--don't know why I insisted on being coy there.

strikes me as one of those movies ready-made for psychoanalytically derived criticism. lacanians will love the cake scene (and the "sex" scene).

I'm assuming the book is more straightforward?

there is no mystery -- it's utterly straightforward in a sort of "plot-delivery" way

True, but there's mystery in that plot is kinda all there is - there's virtually no traditional exposition at all.

I read this book around the same time I saw Morvern Callar

def thought of this film during the club scene.

also The Babe Who Fell to Earth

ScarJ grabbing the lamp to look at herrrrself got a big laugh.

ie I don't think this is ambiguous or mysterious enough to demand multiple viewings. At least chewier than "the brilliant Her," though.

I'm assuming the book is more straightforward?

Yes.

but way more stupid

i guess i should see this? i think i might have had the wrong notion of what it is from the advance publicity.

What was the notion you had?

Thinking again about this movie in relation to The Man Who Fell to Earth, which I mentioned upthread as a double-feature partner... in TMWFTE Newton's downfall is his appetite for Earthly pleasures but in Under the Skin is Scarlett doomed by her incomprehension of them?

(er, rape attempt not included in the formulation of 'Earth;y pleasures' there, of course?)

this was significantly less dopey than Birth

That's not hard to believe.

trailer for this looks solid imo. Maybe the first film where ScarJo's acting doesn't look bad

she's never been the worst thing about anything i've seen her in. just hatin' on a star

but way more stupid

the book may have been a little on-the-nose about its themes but i wouldn't say stupid. is the movie 'smart'?

I just remember having a really negative reaction to the book. Like thinking it was laughable. The film is subtler, not necessarily smarter

the plot summary on wikipedia makes the basic conceit seem a bit odd. that's an awful lot of trouble to go to for what they are getting out of it. (talking vaguely for spoilers sake, thought i suppose that doesn't really apply in this case.)

no more so than any sci-fi novel using aliens to make a point about social issues?

well im just wondering if they want humans to eat why not use agricultural technology of some sort rather than hunting them one by one. get a few and breed them, maybe. perhaps the novel explains this.

i think their own planet is ecologically fucked and most of the population toils in 'oxygen mines' or something, so getting their humans from earth is the only way to get the equivalent of organic, free-range, grass-fed beef for the upper class.

ah! ok that makes more sense.

why they don't just try and take over earth, i don't know (except that it would be a very different book).

i haven't read much in the way of Big Themes gleaned from this film, except maybe the Turnabout of the Female Predator

I took it as a parable about the Futility of Desire. under the skin = under the husk of bodily sensations and urges there's only a blank and insensible bare being, a want without means to consummate--it seems to me that he discovery of her "true" state is as much a surprise to her as to us.

that's why the cake scene brought Lacan's thesis about our true desire being for desire, to prolong our desire, rather than achieve it.

Getting the bus into glasgow today I could have swore I saw one of the women who was getting makeup applied to her face at the shopping mall. For a while I was wondering where I recognised her from.

the cake scene is also abt desire in that sense of 'having one's cake and eating it' - and then feeling sick of indulging, or for succumbing to temptation.

that's why the cake scene brought Lacan's thesis about our true desire being for desire, to prolong our desire, rather than achieve it.

― ryan, Thursday, May 15, 2014 12:20 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i thought that goes back to freud

probably! the death drive and all that.

glad I caught this the last night in the theater

I loved this, saw it twice, definitely best experienced in theater, felt physically disoriented after leaving and only a handful of films have managed to do that for me - barton fink, inland empire, atanarjuat.

there is no mystery -- it's utterly straightforward in a sort of "plot-delivery" way

True, but there's mystery in that plot is kinda all there is - there's virtually no traditional exposition at all.

― bizarro gazzara, Wednesday, May 14, 2014 5:10 PM (1 week ago)

yeah, if I went around telling people the new scarjo-as-space-vampire movie was "utterly straightforward", it would be neither a very apt description nor setting anyone's expectations properly.

plus casting a hollywood starlet to lure ppl to see a disturbing art film about a beautiful alien who lures men to their death, a film which ends up being an examination of desire, attraction, gender identity, & general male repulsiveness, I dunno seems like there's plenty of unpacking to be done here.

Those sounds are at the heart of it.

― Alba, Saturday, March 15, 2014 6:52 PM (2 months ago)

saw this last week and this is so so true... the sounds of the car cooling down, the heater warming up - really amazing. loved the shot of the trees waving in the wind.

well im just wondering if they want humans to eat why not use agricultural technology of some sort rather than hunting them one by one. get a few and breed them, maybe. perhaps the novel explains this.

― ryan, Thursday, May 15, 2014 10:01 AM (1 week ago)

loved this film, by the way. it's my favorite of the year so far, though i haven't seen much. like morbs, i lold at the startled, lamplit self-examination. and i agree w/ EIII abt the themes involved. also think it's about the impossible gulf between the arguably unreal being others desire in perceiving us and our own internal perception of self. neither is knowable to the other (alienated from, etc).

into the idea of spacefaring hunter-gatherers honestly

psyched for scarjo vs predator

Contenderizer, that was from our side discussion of the book, not the movie.

it's from the book as well, of course.

gotcha, jord. conversation seemed back-and-forth between book and movie.

although i said she was excellent upthread when i saw this (and i want to see it again, but at home next time, i think it might be better suited to a tv than big screen), one of the things i find odd about scarlett j is that she often looks like she thinks what shes doing is a little funny. theres always a kind of smirk. even on the recent avengers poster, she looks like shes laughing at the knowing ridiculousness of it all. im not sure if that means she needs meatier, more intelligent roles, or if shes just a bit ironic and smug. but that look is always there, even in films like hes just not that into you.

I haven't seen this yet but the soundtrack is some great music in its own right.

I never noticed her doing a face like that in this film or anything else.

Daniel Clowes said she hated comics but she's been in 5 comic adaptations.

Up until recently I never really "got" why she was attractive to people. I think I get it now.

I guess the test will be whether I'm still thinking about this a few days from now (maybe true of any movie, especially one like this). At the moment, I don't know. I was very much with it for a while, found it started to meander somewhere past the halfway mark, in the end somewhat baffled as to what you might take away from it. The scene with the one pick-up (I'll avoid choosing a word to describe him, because I'll undoubtedly choose the wrong one) was moving. I think a lot of the film's spookiness/unease comes from the score, which I'm positive is cribbed from Rosemary's Baby. Some striking driving-around cinematography. I don't know that I've ever seen a narrative, somewhat mainstream film with fewer words. Most of which I couldn't understand, the blame for which I'll divide equally between me, the theatre, and the film.

i thought that between the swaying trees and zipping through traffic at night, among other things, it had clear debts to tarkovsky

i didn't like it while i was watching it but it's grown on me in retrospect

The scene with the one pick-up (I'll avoid choosing a word to describe him, because I'll undoubtedly choose the wrong one) was moving.

yeah, very powerful, i thought. also, though still strained & minimal, one of the best sustained conversations in a largely dialogue-free film.

I guess the test will be whether I'm still thinking about this a few days from now (maybe true of any movie, especially one like this). At the moment, I don't know. I was very much with it for a while, found it started to meander somewhere past the halfway mark, in the end somewhat baffled as to what you might take away from it. The scene with the one pick-up (I'll avoid choosing a word to describe him, because I'll undoubtedly choose the wrong one) was moving. I think a lot of the film's spookiness/unease comes from the score, which I'm positive is cribbed from Rosemary's Baby. Some striking driving-around cinematography. I don't know that I've ever seen a narrative, somewhat mainstream film with fewer words. Most of which I couldn't understand, the blame for which I'll divide equally between me, the theatre, and the film.

― clemenza, Sunday, June 15, 2014 11:36 PM (Yesterday)

the unintelligible scotspeak was a neat alienation device, amped up the sense of removal, location as stunt casting

I love this movie cuz besides being aesthetically clobbering, there was a lot to think about afterwards. plus I'm a fan of stuff like taxi driver and gardner's grendel, monster movies where you're trapped with the monster for the duration. sympathy for lady predator.

I'd call it deceptively meandering, the laissez-faire approach gives it that open ended feel, but there isn't a sequence in the latter half that doesn't contribute to the themes of desire and appearance, hidden motivations, gender dynamics, and our constant fucked attempts to connect w/ each other. it puts you so close to johannssen's character it's as though her wandering uncertainty infects the viewer, but this is a highly controlled piece of work.

i _want_ to watch this, but have read a bit about it and thus some stuff about the baby scene, and suspect that, having a baby myself, this will fuck me up too much

it was really harsh

the unintelligible scotspeak was a neat alienation device

eh fuck you

what was that, conrad? couldn't quite make it out

seriously who the fuck does this a hard dom is good to find cunt think he is

this was really really good.

I liked this movie saw it recently on a big screen

Did anyone go to the screening with live soundtrack at the Royal Festival Hall? If so, how was it?

I loved the verite style high street/shopping centre scenes, the drowning scene and the horrific segment where you see the fate of the wet-suit guy. This is the most memorable new movie I have seen since A Touch Of Sin. For some reason i can't explain, it reminds me of Boorman's Zardoz.

its like this movie is still going on

What I like about this movie is that if you look past all the art house stuff, it's great schlock. I'm cool with great schlock as long as some effort is put into it and I think it delivers. I'm also well aware that I'm in the Roger Ebert phase of my life and willing to praise any indie sci-fi that does its own thing without the baggage of jokey irony or "in the style of..." nonsense. Double-billing this with Upstream Color in my Popular Alienation film series seems like a no-brainer.

I wonder how many times Glazer had to pitch this as The Hunger meets Trainspotting.

It's like Species meets Vagabond!

It's like Basic Instinct but the killer is a naive child

I liked this quite a bit

I'm about halfway through it and it is somthing. Stanley Kubrick's "Lifeforce!"

trainspotting is also set in scotland

I have heard there are a few movies set in that land

it's a neat device, setting movies in scotland - people are scottish when they do it

Interview with sound designer Johnnie Burn http://www.film4.com/special-features/interviews/under-the-skin-sound-design

funny (or not), have lost all memory of a baby scene

maybe i've blocked it out cuz theyre all kind of repellent

I'm about halfway through it

and you stopped to post, always impressive

Had to. It was late, massive thunderstorms, one of my kids woke up. Then I went to sleep. Sometimes life intervenes. Hell, since having kids it's a wonder I get to see an entire movie at home from start to finish.

what about if kids

it reminds me of Boorman's Zardoz.

ha! this is kind of true.

although zardoz is kind of over-explanatory while this is defiantly elliptical

It's like Species meets Vagabond!

― Elvis Telecom, Tuesday, 1 July 2014 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

A+

this was like a fable for budding sociopaths...communicating with hoomans thru the facade of an act/skin, doing it too good and then starting to believe in your own act/skin and thus becoming a vulnerable prey.

After a striking opening and duly admiring the sound design and precision of some of the shots, I came away pretty bored by this. She drives in a van picking up guys and sucking their souls? Okay! Reminded me of 1982's Cat People.

That's a bad thing?

a slower Cat People?

Everything's better ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Omrp4QR_Rpo

This movie has really stayed with me. It's gotten under my...

Anyway I really liked it so I bought it.

I liked this. Did a nice job in a low-key way of showing everything from an alien/alienated perspective. All of her POV shots from inside the van, where she's seeing people do things that don't register with her (chatting, going to a football game), and then the great scene on the beach where she watches people die and abandons the baby -- not out of hostility, just indifference. And the encounter with the logger on the trail, where he's asking her the same questions she always asked and she realizes how really alone she is.

I know some people thought the movie was pretentious, but I don't think there's a whole lot of pretense. Nothing seemed too self-important to me, just carefully thought through and well made. (Maybe it's just the Scottish connection, but tonally it reminded me a bit of Morvern Callar.)

baby scene was hilarious

Still thinking about it, watched the director's previous two films the subsequent nights after seeing it (had already seen Sexy Beast, a friend I was with the whole time hadn't though) and immediately read the book. That's quite an effect.

baby scene was hilarious
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Sunday, August 3, 2014 4:23 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Fuckin' A, once you have a baby watch it again - literally the exact scientific opposite of hilarious

I had a weird moment this week where I was talking to this guy who was explaining that Scarlett Johannson had replaced Samantha Morton in the main role of this movie, but then I realized he was actually talking about 'Her,' and *then* it dawned on me that there is another movie from the late 90s called "Under the Skin" starring Samantha Morton and then I suddenly drowned, be-bonered, in some black liquid

I was cringing like crazy at the entire family death scene

xpost Which is perfect, given the Morvern Callar echoes.

yeah that scene is almost unbearably cruel.

probably a big reach but I felt there were some echoes between that scene and the climax--the infant's "mute" lack of speech, helplessness, etc. some common lack of personhood.

that other film called Under The Skin is also excellent.

Maybe I missed it, but is there any clear moment when you can tell she develops sympathy for humans? Certainly with the man with elephantitis, but why, exactly? Did she feel akin? Is it all just morbid curiosity on her part? Is there some clear moment that shifts her from killing machine to wannabe human?

there was that bit where she said "no, *I'm* the monster!" and ran out of the room

I don't know about <clear> moment, but she seems to register that the disfigured guy has a different energy than the other guys she's picked up - namely that he's not leering at her and making things incredibly tense with barely disguised aggressive vibes. She seems designed/built/whatever to be hot and to lure dudes using her sexuality, and when he doesn't respond to that the way the other guys do, she gets thrown - which starts things snowballing.

There's no explicit reason given why, but it seemed to me that throughout the film she develops a longing to be human. She definitely seemed to find a kinship with the neurofibromatosis guy's outsider status - human, but not quite accepted, on the fringes etc. There's that scene where she examines her human form in the mirror, fascinated. At that point she wants to be human, I think, but her failed attempts at fitting in - eg the cake - prove that she will never belong.

There's something to that (both of those). It's like she had no trouble preying on these men because they all reacted to her lures the same way; in this regard, women and children don't even factor. But when she encounters the neurofibromatosis guy, who reacts in a totally unexpected manner, she can't quite seal the deal. Rather than some dude she lured to his death, he's a reluctant target she actively has to pursue and draw in. And yeah, she likely sensed he was different. Almost like, I dunno, how a meat eater might react after seeing a pig befriend a kitten or something. So she knows there's something more to being human, or whatever these creatures are, and the backend of the movie is her trying to figure it out. Food, sex, etc. When the guy in the woods turns on her, it's like her punishment for letting her guard down, for thinking these stupid, weird creatures as more than meat and potentially even threats.

A lot of similarity to bits in vampire movies where the guilty vampire tries some alternative to blood and barfs.

The logger preyed on her in a similar way she preyed on her victims - initially feigning friendliness and concern, asking if she was alone etc

It's a pretty bleak moral, if you want to think of it in that way. Empathy = weakness that will end with you being incinerated in the woods.

I saw this movie and thought it was really good -- didn't get pretentious vibes but I watch a lot of bad movies so a "good" movie seems extra good to me.
Certainly with the man with elephantitis, but why, exactly? Did she feel akin?
I thought the neurofibromatosis guy part was all about bodies -- the only thing people were reacting to was his face, but his body was just like any other body (whereas her body was not). Maybe this was just because he was walking around naked in the black goo. Maybe she was kinda envious? I dunno. I really liked her costuming/look even if it was a little ott stylish.

xpost You can look at it that way. Or you can look at it as humans=complicated. If she's used to herding sheep, she's in for a shock when she meets a wolf. Esp. since all her killing was easy-peasy luring. The dude aliens seemed a lot more physical and monomaniacal.

it seemed to me that throughout the film she develops a longing to be human

I think there was a necessary built-in contradiction that ultimately she couldn't resolve -- to be effective as bait, she had to convincingly mirror or mimic empathy, all of those friendly flirty conversations where she's playing off of the men's reactions. However artificial her responses were, they still forced her into some kind of understanding of emotion and the search for connection. So I think she was already emotionally primed before she met the disfigured man, and then his loneliness actually affected her in a way the other men hadn't.

This was excellent, wish I'd seen it in the theater for the amazing landscapes and the creepy all-white/all-black spaces and the two dudes dissolving in the goo. The score is fantastic too, didn't realize it was Micachu from Micachu & the Shapes. The movie was more effectively disturbing than most horror movies I see (yeah yeah mainly because of the family dying on the beach and especially the baby alone on the beach).

this would be a good double bill with leviathan, very similar music/sounds. though leviathan is more psychedelic and trippy.

You guys were way more traumatized by the baby scene than I was! Great scene, though, for sure.

Maybe I missed it, but is there any clear moment when you can tell she develops sympathy for humans? Certainly with the man with elephantitis, but why, exactly? Did she feel akin? Is it all just morbid curiosity on her part? Is there some clear moment that shifts her from killing machine to wannabe human?

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, August 5, 2014 3:54 PM (2 weeks ago)

her character arc got a lot clearer on subsequent viewings. moments like the bloody rose, and the scene where she falls and others stop to help her up, they seemed like weird random occurrences on first watch but they're data points she uses to develop a sense of human compassion.

really happy that ilxors are digging this, I know a couple ppl who had ambivalent inititial reactions but later found it stayed with them. the making of extras on the blu ray are v good, interesting interview with mica re: the soundtrack.

the soundtrack is awesome to listen to on public transport. Definitely adds that extra frisson to your morning bus ride

her character arc got a lot clearer on subsequent viewings. moments like the bloody rose, and the scene where she falls and others stop to help her up, they seemed like weird random occurrences on first watch but they're data points she uses to develop a sense of human compassion.

I thought the bloody rose was a false alarm for her that her human skin was deteriorating. (Given the first and last scenes in the movie, this clearly can happen.) Then when she saw that it was just the blood from someone who'd gotten cut, she relaxed -- but the point was taken. The same is possible, I suppose, for the falling down being a clue of her losing her equilibrium. But I like your interpretations of those scenes, too.

the score for this is so great, i can't imagine the movie without it.

the sound design is a big part of it too. At times they're kind of one and the same

those scenes could be both actually - her own frailty contrasted with human kindness

All of the comparisons to The Man Who Fell to Earth are apt. Both films are technically impressive and fun to think/read about, but honestly kind of tedious in practice. Will give this one the slight edge over Roeg's because the scene with the neurofibromatosis guy was honestly poignant.

Wau @ this film

the motorcyclist's role sort of befuddled me (why would he want the family's belongings from the beach but leave the baby?)

so no one disliked it eh

well all the people upthread hated it

I like how this reminds everyone of a different alien-vampire movie. Species, Liquid Sky, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Cat People whatever

I...admired it, I guess, but I'm finding that it has had very little resonance with me since I saw it.

i felt the opposite ... very skeptical during the film, but parts of it have stuck with me since i saw it

The scene with the disfigured man lingers, I should have added.

the key sequences of this movie - at the beach with the baby, picking up the facial neurofibromatosis guy, the two victims floating in the black goo, the final scene - are so well done, they are pretty indelibly inked in my mind

let us compare
to Rohmer

https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/the-women-in-the-city-love-in-the-afternoon-under-the-skin

Having just read the nigh unfilmable book (thread here), which is essentially an animal rights parable, I think the liberties taken by the Glazer & Campbell to make the protagonist somewhat sympathetic, and her employers mysterious, were all pretty brilliant.

For those who haven't seen the book, about the only thing shared is a lone apparent woman using her charms to entice hitchhikers on the A9 to doom. The novel's still worthwhile for fans of slipstream literature.

Ha, forgot about that thread. Good prediction from me in second post.

the motorcyclist's role sort of befuddled me (why would he want the family's belongings from the beach but leave the baby?)

― Οὖτις, Monday, September 22, 2014 12:47 PM (1 week ago)

he took the surfer's belongings, not the family's

This is now on Amazon Prime Instant Video in the UK.

Thanks for the heads up! I enjoyed that.

this was a lot of fun! good mix of body horror weirdness and some things that are actually sticking with me.

my fav shot was the one where scarjo gets swept up in the crowd of girls headed toward the club and you can feel her being like who the fuck are these creatures.

The beach scene in this is one of the most harrowing things I've ever seen, and not just because we were pregnant when we saw it.

grow a pair

i mean was it twins

Just watched this, read all of this thread. Pretty much an amazing film: the beach scene (though I wasn't as affected as you parents up here), the wavering trees, the forest and depiction of the Highlands. And the score, jesus, so great. The tune (theme?) playing while SJ is having sex is still echoing around in my head an hour after. Hope this will bring Mica Levi some more praise and work, the music is immaculate, and key, in this movie. I think SJ was really great in this too: very restrained in her befuddlement, but it was just enough to get you on board.

One plot question though: the motorcyclist, is he supposed to be her 'employer' or alien overlord? He sets her up with a 'skin' in the beginning, and when she 'flees', or isn't delivering the goods, he rides around looking for her, being all Caspar David Friedrich standing on a rock and motorway looking out for her? That's slolely it with him? Or did I miss something?

Solely, not slolely

i'm not really sure glazer completely knows what the motorcyclist is, represents or is supposed to be. i don't really have a problem with that but i can see why most people would.

(book spoilers) In the Michel Faber novel, the main character's only responsibility is identifying well-muscled hitchhikers who won't be missed, and sedating them in the passenger seat. There's another human-appearing alien managing her, and the coastal farm where the fattening and meat processing takes place, as well as numerous untransformed aliens in underground warrens doing the work. The movie is much superior for getting away from the vegan parable.

Ah thanks, that makes sense. I don't have a problem with it Jed, I was just wondering if I'd missed something. In fact, I thought the idea of the mysterious motorcyclist worked rather well. It added pressure to her storyline, knowing she was being searched for probably. Without that counterpart she wouldn't be 'stuck' between humans and aliens. He at least made it clear to us that she wasn't a solitary alien on earth, but rather part of some sort of organisation. Which, for me, made her distress at the end even more palpable.

Think Glazer did well to effect an incredibly nuanced reworking of the book (which had all the abandon of a first novel as well as being defiantly Sci-fi), and created the most amazing externalisation of the abject psyche in Under the Skin. The heterotopic cesspit in which SJ's victims are assimilated is the border between life and death - living cadavers come to encroach upon our earthly boundaries, bringing us face to face with the most brutal reminder of ourselves. In fact, I'm just paraphrasing Kristeva now...

For some light new year's day reading, this essay is basically the perfect companion to this film (and is a truly wonderful piece of writing): http://seas3.elte.hu/coursematerial/RuttkayVeronika/Kristeva_-_powers_of_horror.pdf

I thought the cyclist was just sort of the male expression of this species. Like, the females do one thing and the men do another, like spiders or something. Not really sure what they are up to on earth. Stranded? Invading? Is the house alive? Is there more than one house? I love all the ambiguity.

I liked this a hell of a lot and more and more each time I think about it. I thought Scarjo was amazing. The beach scene was so horrible. I almost yelled, "but the baby!". I think EIII otm regarding the bloody rose and her falling scenes in terms of her developing a sense of compassion. "One plot question though: the motorcyclist, is he supposed to be her 'employer' or alien overlord? He sets her up with a 'skin' in the beginning, and when she 'flees', or isn't delivering the goods, he rides around looking for her." I kind of thought that's what he was. They were a team doing their people snatching thing and she was the bait and he was sort of taking care of things she messed up (the guy she let go) and trying to find her when she went off. This made me want to go to Scotland again. And buy some acid washed jeans.

Finally got around to seeing this and as a recent first-time parent found the beach scene to be the most disturbing/upsetting sequence I've ever seen.

being a parent especially a new one really pays in spades when it comes to some movies and news stories

xp
Your are probably best avoiding Finding Nemo as well.

Dang, everyone's so weepy about the baby scene! Maybe someone came by and saved the baby!

Yeah. Sure.

it is weird - I do find myself being more affected by certain types of scenes, post-parenthood. Infant-related stuff not so much (I don't really have a hard time divorcing scenes with infants from reality), but certain things about parents relating to their kids and vice versa can really affect me.

The beach scene *really* upset my wife.

oooh, just found out one of my friends is playing drums for this:
http://www.theregenttheater.com/event/722411-screening-under-skin-wild-los-angeles/

How can anyone care for the baby when the poor dog's drowning horribly beforehand?

the entire situation was the stupid dog's fault, iirc

pulling some kind of reverse-Lassie

Dog was part of the alien team.

Maybe some other enigmatic alien swooped by to harvest the baby.

There's a bonus disc in the DVD set that features several hours of the baby at home with its new parents, who are more supportive and loving than its previous parents.

Oh good that's a relief. Does the DVD indicate whether the child would go on to suffer adverse effects from the beach scene in later life?

The baby was taken to the Snowpiercer train.

dog lovers shd avoid The Babadook btw

good to know, my gf was already reticent and now i know never to watch it in my house.

there's v obvious foreshadowing, so obvious I couldn't believe it when fulfilled.

there's v obvious foreshadowing

As in, if there's a dog in a horror movie, and that dog has a name, chances are it is doomed?

well i don't see many horror movies as it's the worst genre for that and other reasons

Morbs, if you see a dog in a horror movie, and that dog has a name ...

lol @ calling horror the worst genre

can't believe i took so long to get round to this. incredible film. was utterly absorbed at every moment and wished it wouldn't end - love films where you're in this bubble of seeing the world differently, it feels disorientating coming back to reality.

what did SJ do with the body of the czech guy whose head she bashed in? take him back to eat as well? all her other victims were lured into the black pool alive, but would clubbing them over the head beforehand work just as well?

have to say i found the baby beach scene more blackly comic than remotely horrifying, i was more distressed about the poor dog. actually, that's not quite true - i felt dispassionate during it, as i felt dispassionate towards SJ's sundry victims, because you're not just seeing ~ordinary glasgow through an alien's eyes but with her emotional disinterest too. again, a bit like a bubble.

i was glad i had a passing acquaintance with glasgow, enough to recognise places but not so much that it was distracting.

as much as i didn't want that ending, i appreciate not going the route of suddenly giving the alien powers - her fear and flight from the rapist was when she became human, as vulnerable as a human, after failing to become so with human pleasures.

the motorcyclists (who increased in number as she went off piste, right?) reminded me of buzzing drone bees trying to recapture an errant queen...

would LOVE to see the footage they couldn't use, if there was any disappointment it was that there didn't seem to be that many SJ/ordinary glaswegian scenes. presumably the guys she actually got back to her lair were actors, though if they managed to get a random off the streets to get hard on camera, kudos to all involved i guess

oh yeah and i loved the scene where she got swept into the club by the posse of girls! what club was that, glaswegians? (also what club would be playing "sandstorm" in this decade...)

A long long time ago in a galaxy far away ....

"the motorcyclists (who increased in number as she went off piste, right?) reminded me of buzzing drone bees trying to recapture an errant queen..."

I didn't think they increased in number. I thought it was just the same one guy the whole way through. I need to watch this again because I'm still thinking about it two weeks later.

Months on, this is the movie of 2014 that's probably haunted me most. Images from it just pop into my head sometimes. Is the book worth reading? I understand it's quite different. Would having seen the film diminish reading the book?

I keep getting images too. And I keep thinking about the scene where they start to have sex and she examines her vagina and then how she's woken and exposed by the rapist logger and what that means etc. The final image keeps popping into my head often.

I didn't think they increased in number. I thought it was just the same one guy the whole way through.

i def recall a scene where there were four?

i'm still thinking about it too

yeah there were more motorcycle people at the end, good catch

God, I totally missed that!

Would having seen the film diminish reading the book?

Nah I don't think so, they're very different aside from the basic scenario. It's interesting to have the book in mind just to think about the filmmakers' choices though.

Also, I think this is one of the few examples where I'd prefer to see the film before reading the book. The film is an extreme stripped down version of the idea of the book, it truly is "based on the book" in the sense that the book has a whole other dimension to the plot.

I also thought there was only one motorcyclist btw!

I kind of hated the ending of the book when I read it although I loved it up to that point. the movie is much more haunting and ambiguous and weird.

TBH, the central themes of the book are at right angles to those of the film, and the book is so frequently internal dialogue its nigh unfilmable. They're two distinct entities that share little besides an alien picking up unattached hitchhikers on Scottish A roads.

^ internal monologue

well there's 2 hours i won't get back.

I think it was too short. Not that I was crazy about it or anything but I wanted more stages.

http://nomoredeaddogs.tumblr.com/post/84245309417/under-the-skin-2014-i-forgot-there-was-a-dog

:(

never really thought this merited the hype when i saw it. but am going to watch on dvd this week - i think i already wrote about it upthread when it was released but it does seem like a warpfilms, lo budget brit sci fi kind of film, one that would work better at home than in the cinema. just remember finding it quite choppy in terms of its flow, and a bit jarringly edited, more a sequence of setpieces than a narrative, as if they were a bit too razor happy in the editing room. glazer's nicole kidman film was better.

http://reverseshot.org/features/1988/two_cents_2014

Under the Skin is perfect, in its way: it nails that brand of cool distance familiar from certain strands of art-world installation work, Björk music videos, Lexus commercials, and…almost any other arty indie sci-fi film. Indeed, its icy perfection becomes all terribly expected after a point, and going back over the film, looking at its shooting strategies, it feels less a work of rigor than one of remove. Even so, its fans generally came off like a pack of forty-niners in their rush to be the first to label it “Kubrickian.” It’s clear that Jonathan Glazer, who last gave us the risible Birth, has seen A Clockwork Orange (dig that near-future retro-present shtick!), The Shining (marvel at those geometrically precise compositions and sickening string glissandos!), and, of course, 2001: A Space Odyssey (visual abstractions and cosmic ambiguity!). But one wonders if he’s really taken in Barry Lyndon (for wryly undercutting its lush romanticism), Full Metal Jacket (for conveying righteous anger in the face of senseless, real-life horror), Eyes Wide Shut (for its clear-eyed yet oddly romantic examination of the marital institution), or hell, even Dr. Strangelove (for its bawdy hilarity). The insurmountable gap between Glazer and Kubrick seems plain: both have formidable command over the stuff cinema is made of, but Kubrick was able to consistently marshal that talent into expressive works that speak beyond themselves, to the world at large. Under the Skin is airless, worked over within an inch of its life, and might well look better in a gallery than a movie theater. What exactly are we to take away from it? That humanity is special and rare and to be cherished? That alienation is the modern condition and the lot of everyone, even space vixens? One wonders, if you removed the aesthetic bells and whistles, what’s left under Under the Skin. —Jeff Reichert

Nah

What makes a film feminist? You can start by having a woman or group of women make the movie. You don’t have to address the sex lives of women, but if you do, they don’t have to be slut-shamed. You can pass the Bechdel Test (though Under the Skin doesn’t) and portray the lives of women as they are actually experienced. A sci-fi or fantasy film that suspends or hyperbolizes certain aspects of reality can play around even more. In Under the Skin, we get an alien wearing a woman-suit, but she (it?) is not necessarily concerned with being a “woman” at all. Though she understands the seductive powers of feminine wiles, it’s all a ruse, a means to a different, gooier end than her male victims imagine. This premise, which the first half of the film sets up, brims with feminist potential, as many critics have noted. But when this unfeeling alien encounters a man with a face disfigured by neurofibromatosis, instead of ingesting him like anyone else, she spares (i.e. friend-zones) him. Moreover his “specialness” triggers her curiosity about, and sympathy for, being human. Of course the exceptional treatment of disabled characters is nothing new in film and television, but this is more than a regrettably clunky episode. Because feminism is not about “women” so much as it is about toppling patriarchy, a system that says that some bodies matter more than others, whatever feminist statement this film is trying to make is almost entirely undone by this hackneyed trope. Disability is not incidental or adjacent to feminism, but wholly shares in its anti-patriarchal critique. Under the Skin punts on this very issue. Unlike, say, the dwarf-tossing incident in The Wolf of Wall Street, where the depraved treatment of the disabled illustrates Jordan Belfort’s inhuman callousness, Under the Skin comes off as sanctimonious and inconsistent (and still sexist). Though it shows how bad it is to be a woman in this world—constantly subjected to the predatory behavior of men, threatened with rape, etc.—it wrongly exempts the disfigured man from this misery. Instead of sharing in the lot of the disadvantaged, or even the privilege of men, it treats him, like so many movies, as someone outside the system, no more than a magical talisman. —Genevieve Yue

so basically men with sexual desire get killed. men without apparent desire get the girl (even if they dont get to take them to bed). so kind of like, women dont want to have sex, they just want a friend. did stephen fry write this movie?

surprised not to see the word "problematic" in that one

The first review proceeds from an irrelevant strawman to a useless catalog of things the film isn't. The second, similarly, faults Glazer's film for approaches it fails to take, critiques it doesn't make. Both refuse to work up from what the film actually is to whatever it might mean. Under the Skin concerns an attempt to construct and comprehend identity in response to the perceptions and behavior of others (that behavior, in turn, a reflection of external appearances). It's about reverse-engineering the self. In this context, the alien's response to the disfigured man makes perfect sense. The creature is fascinated by the implications of appearance and difference, seemingly troubled by the unbridgeable gap between superficial and interior reality.

Also, I'm getting sick of asides suggesting that the film presents the protagonist as "constantly subjected to the predatory behavior of men". This is simply not true. The truck driver who appears at the end is really the only male character who fits this description.

^^^

yeah those are both weird takes.

What exactly are we to take away from it? That humanity is special and rare and to be cherished? That alienation is the modern condition and the lot of everyone, even space vixens?

my own feeling is that the movie is about the horror of recognizing the opposite. her inability to be a "person" uncannily reflects back at us.

this movie is bad because it doesn't contain Stanley Kubrick's entire filmography

yeah that was fucking stupid

true of most movies tbh

i don't get the kubrick thing at all. what was kubricky about it?

true of most movies tbh

― ryan, Thursday, January 22, 2015 5:50 PM (22 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

kubrick's for a start

I didn't think Of Kubrick once watching this myself

maybe there's arguably some thematic things in common but it doesn't look or feel like a kubrick movie at all. and while i dont think it's better than really any of kubrick's movies that's hardly a knock against it.

only way to fix it's lack of Kubrick is to get it remade by spielberg, with a 45-minute coda about her quest to become a real girl

now AI would definitely be an interesting comparison!

i dont exactly get the kubrick thing myself - thats just critics needing to slam something canon-y/cinephile-ish in there, or simply unable to watch a new film without seeing it as referring to something in the past. there are better things to slam this movie about, like its jarring editing for instance. or how there arent more club scenes. or the fact that it lacks anything resembling humour. it is a bit too aware of and in love with its entire arty-sci-fi-ness. the reviewer did get that part right, though i think thats why it seems to be rated so highly, simply for what it doesnt do (ie its not interstellar, yay!) than what it does, which iirc is basically deconstructionist, minimalist, and ambivalence, all great concepts, but for me, it just made it seem kind of disconnected. plus, i had watched the man who fell to earth already and didnt really need a low budget 21st century remake of it. am thinking i should just file it under critic-bait/indie british films we are meant to SUPPORT/films you are meant to like as the lead star who is usually in big hollywood productions is slumming it.

the man who fell to earth is a mess and a slog, especially compared to the economy and intensity of under the skin

theres economy.... and then there's borderline brutal jumps in flow. then again maybe that could be a virtue. bold and brutal editing - a suitably blunt style of editing for the times. like jumping from one internet browser tab to the next. or going through a youtube playlist. yes, actually, fuck flow and smooth transitions and continuity and all the rest of it - more exciting to just shuttle around (im not being facetious here).

editing style is well suited to the material imo, and it allows for mystery to seep in through the gaps

im going to watch it again with this new aesthetic appreciation i have developed and report back after the weekend. also going to have a few drinks just in case i get pissed off at it again. or i might just put the scenes that look like a car advert on repeat.

am now wondering what harmony korine (also someone with a good grasp of nu-jar editing mannerisms) might have done with the script

"humorless" is a fair charge i guess, but i think any overtly funny moments would've broken the spell and seemed out of place.

i like man who fell to earth ok but under the skin does a way better job of depicting what an actual non-human perspective might be like imo.

some of the jump cuts in this movie actually made me literally jump. i don't know if any movie's ever done that to me before.

it's a film about the experience of alienation and dislocation, the struggle to make sense of environment and experience. abstraction, fragmentation and coldness work as elements of the narrative, not mere style for style's sake.

what he said

id say enter the void had a trippier take on non human perspectives, despite still being from the POV of an actual human. glazer should have done that peep show/lady in the water-POV type thing maybe, so we never even see the alien. that might have been interesting and more challenging (after all, a lot of people would probably never have checked this out if it wasnt for scarjo/scarjo being naked). do have an allergic reaction to po-faced analysis of this movie however which i am trying to work through.

this isn't available on Blu-Ray at the video store, and it seems like a Blu-Ray (as opposed to DVD) kind of movie. how should I see this?

this reminded me of Morvern Callar more than anything else (which is a film I love)

It reminded me of Morvern Callar too!

morvern callar has one fantastic shot (of a spaced-out drug-addled partygoer) that sticks really strongly in my mind

it's kind of a grainy film, I think dvd would be alright (several xposts)

"humorless" is a fair charge i guess, but i think any overtly funny moments would've broken the spell and seemed out of place.

Should have been a bloopers reel over the end credits with ScarJo's funniest Glasgow pickup moments.

only way to fix it's lack of Kubrick is to get it remade by spielberg, with a 45-minute coda about her quest to become a real girl

this ignorant shit never gets old, does it

uh SJ using the lamp is very funny

it's a fucking joke, morbs. relax.

waiting for the pron remake, personally.

Alba otm

She picked up a total ned, that is comedy.

But I think this film would have done fine without humour. Don't see why it would need it.

I don't think anyone is actually advocating for the injection of humor into the film, Robert

i said it seemed like a blu-ray film b/c it's so DARK (literally--lots of black) and blacks come across better in HD

uh SJ using the lamp is very funny

― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Friday, January 23, 2015 6:25 AM (3 hours ago)

otm, one of the year's few genuine laugh-out-loud moments for me (re supposed humorlessness)

the kid screaming on the beach as motorcycle alien returns got a groany laugh in the theatre when I saw it

Tough crowd.

this isn't available on Blu-Ray at the video store, and it seems like a Blu-Ray (as opposed to DVD) kind of movie. how should I see this?

with clenched teeth

whoa

this was great

um, i uh

being a visible self is hard eh. also she felt like less predator, more...end-point

legit horror movie. the bit with the men trapped underwater was possibly the most startling thing i've seen in years if not ever

glazer doesn't so much have a style as have every style almost effortlessly at his disposal

the score was quite astonishing

scar-jo spoon-jar confusion got a laugh, just like that

uh

this felt complex, progressive, daring and genuinely menacing. also felt like the film glazer's been wanting to make the whole time

those reviews c&pd upthread are deeply and almost frighteningly stupid

"legit horror movie. the bit with the men trapped underwater was possibly the most startling thing i've seen in years if not ever"

If I would have watched this as a kid, I would have been terrified.

Anyone else keep half expecting Limmy to turn up in this?

or russ abbott

sorry - russ abbot

or Rab C Nesbitt

etc etc

alex salmond

mel gibson

would have been a totally different film if glen michael had taken the lead role as glazer originally intended

Sean Connery

Andy Murray

would have been a totally different film if glen michael had taken the lead role as glazer originally intended

― bizarro gazzara, Tuesday, September 1, 2015 9:50 AM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so it became a film about the abject feminine by accident? /reductive

no it was a joke

They've painted blue feet on the right side of the escalator. Everything is wrong today

totty the robot haring around the countryside on a motorbike

One thing confused me in this film : she picks up a guy with a hibs scarf who has a glaswegian accent

And as the dudes are mainly on secret camera he must actually be a weegie hibee

Yes, in the confusion stakes, that whole space alien thing was, in comparison, a doddle

uh oh

Er, I am not being sarcastic. I am quite taken with the idea that the REAL weirdness of the film is to do with football

Apologies. I was constructing some dread internal lambast but <150 posts in 12 years is quite unbelievable restraint and I bow to your mastery

Neil would you just... touch me

once a month is ample

Perhaps we shall draw Pope Neil into an argument which triples his net ILX contribution and draws him tragically and inexorably down to our level

Hooooooly shit

otm

Great film

good movie imo

Missed it 5 years ago but it’s in my top 10 of the decade now, damn

Such a striking and iirc ultimately sad movie.

It remains my favourite film of the decade.

It’s very good but I really found it too hard to watch and couldn’t finish it. Beach scene fucked me up.

(also what club would be playing "sandstorm" in this decade...)

― lex pretend, Wednesday, January 7, 2015 9:59 AM (four years ago)

lol lex.

Great film and whoever it was upthread who said it was Patrick Keiller-esque was otm.

Dang, everyone's so weepy about the baby scene! Maybe someone came by and saved the baby!

I thought this, but the SJ character hears on the radio that a man's body was found and the mother and child are missing and they've called off the search 'cos of fog, which seemed like an unnecessarily cruel bit of info.

One of the few films I've been majorly excited about that actually exceeded my hopes - that opening sequence blew my mind and there's not a wasted frame after that.

beach scene was very tough to take. kinda stunned that someone called it "hilarious" upthread, unless that was supposed to be a joke.

Extremely tough, and also the most shockingly alien in perspective. Kicks the film into high gear.

has anyone else read the book? it's very very different but also good.

Same cinematographer for his 2020 Auschwitz film, some 6+ years in development. I fear that because nothing has been reported on summer 2019 production, that it'll be pushed to 2021...

The comparisons to Kubrick are more apt looking at the Glazer's whole ouvre, in the concerns (Kubrick also planned an Auschwitz film), stunt casting, framing, pacing, and intervals between films.

Yep I've read the book too - I'm glad I didn't see a lot of that stuff on screen actually. I'm impressed with Glazer planting the same seed in a different medium and letting it mutate. Strongest Kubrick influence perhaps.

Birth seems like his most Kubrickian, and best probably, don't know that I'm looking forward to him making an Auschwitz film tho

my first viewing of this, at the tail end of a multiplex run, was hysterical. to be clear it had run in multiplexes in scotland because it was filmed in glasgow and i guess there was "local interest". mass walkouts, people around me all asking what the fuck they'd come to, people accusing others in their party for having asked them to come to see it. the best was a boxer guy that i recognised from my own gym shouting how shite it was as he noisily left the auditorium.

i fucking love it.

you could barely concentrate on the film for all the noisy hilarity going on.

beach scene was very tough to take. kinda stunned that someone called it "hilarious" upthread, unless that was supposed to be a joke.

I’m not a film guy but even my dumb ass recognized this shit was transcendent.

What’s weird is that the beach scene didn’t disturb me as much as it did many others (although I also didn’t find it “hilarious”, wtf) but the scene of the guy watching the other guy get sucked out of his skin and then watching the empty skin float around in the void is one of the most disturbing nightmare images I’ve ever seen in a movie. I have a super vivid memory of watching it in the cinema and feeling paralyzed with dread.

yes. I also thought the scene with attempted sex was memorable, and the cake scene where the SJ character is looking at it and wondering, what the hell is this?

Seriously tempted to show this in the film club I'm doing.

do any women like this movie? just curious

cause like I can't imagine it being as big a hit/making as much of an impact with an actress less hot than The Scarjo, and that seems ironically problematic maybe? haven't figured it out yet, but I did like this movie

Well the big joke is that these dudes are willing to follow a woman who looks like scarjo into what looks like a crack den if they think they’re gonna get laid, though you could certainly argue maybe that would be true with any moderately attractive woman though making it her I think does make it funnier

My wife was def into this movie
Xp

It's not really a comedy though, is it? I don't think I laughed once during the whole thing, although, like I said, I really liked this movie! It's good, but I didn't laugh. Certainly never like "lol they're falling for her cause she's moderately attractive at least" cause I mean what's funny about that. That's just human nature. If you're a straight guy, haven't you ever fallen for someone super hot who actually talked to you for a little bit? And from the moment that started to happen, weren't you sorta on the clock to figure out whether this clearly hot person is worth being talked to by your obviously superior intellect? And should you feel ashamed about it if you decided she is? I never found a "big joke" in this movie, but it did make me feel ashamed of all the times I ever thought with my balls, and it did feel like some sort of feminist masterpiece that I'll probably always be under and never really understand.

this didn't seem comedic to me at all.

I've only seen it once but the motorcyclist seemed like some kind of alien handler who was ultimately in a position of control

stephanie zacharek liked it:

https://www.villagevoice.com/2014/04/02/under-the-skin-is-alluring-creepy-and-great/

the genius of the movie for me was its showing a view of human empathy from a completely outside perspective, thought it was moving

I know women who rate it pretty high, I obv can’t speak for their precise reasons but it takes on stuff like the male gaze and gendered power dynamics pretty explicitly.

Scarlett Johansson being in it obviously helped the movie get made & get seen, but I think it’s one of those cases where that also works artistically. There are obv many different layers and readings that can be brought to bear, but the larger context of viewers being aware of her as a giant movie star and international sex symbol is definitely at play in how the movie is operating and what its doing, imo

I mean I just thought it was funny that she led these dudes into this sketchy as fuck building and they blissfully went along. It’s funny because it’s ridiculous and yet totally believable.

Poll: Would you walk into black water for Scarlet Johanson?

Y
N

I've been to places that look like where she takes the men but I am from Glasgow ymmv if you have lived bougiely only

cause like I can't imagine it being as big a hit/making as much of an impact with an actress less hot than The Scarjo, and that seems ironically problematic maybe? haven't figured it out yet, but I did like this movie

― del griffith, Friday, September 6, 2019 8:59 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

it wasn't a hit, it made half its budget back. seems weird bc it made an impact, at least at the time, I've been meaning to check this out for 5+ years based on one perfect recommendation ("Under the Skin tho"). and shakey is right about Stranger Things ripping this off and doing it worse

alright well not a hit, but the reason we're all talking about it now.

and it's not really about Glasgow though is it? it's about men being taken in by attractive women no matter what hopeless environment they happen to find themselves in, and therein lies the trap.

What’s weird is that the beach scene didn’t disturb me as much as it did many others (although I also didn’t find it “hilarious”, wtf) but the scene of the guy watching the other guy get sucked out of his skin and then watching the empty skin float around in the void is one of the most disturbing nightmare images I’ve ever seen in a movie.

N, but I don't think it was just black water. The endless white/black plane of the "seduction" scenes (nods to THX 1138) would have left me limply curious. Maybe it related to the rundown tenement as the interior of the Tardis, but if taken as presented and not a visual metaphor, the victims have tunnel vision I've never experienced except under psychedelics. There's some trancranial magnetic stimulation (etc) going on.

Mild spoilers for book: In Faber's book, while the protagonist Isserley may use (artificial) feminine charms to keep the victims talking until she can confirm they won't be missed, there's no undressing, just a button in the dash that activates autoinjectors under the passenger seat. The cinematic version is far better.

TBF, the film retains very little from the book besides "female appearing alien develops misgivings about abducting male hitchhikers in Scotland for further processing". I like the "alien anthropologist goes native" thread of the film, and I don't think the book's focuses on class consciousness, backbreaking labor, or factory farming could have worked visually.

I liked this movie but haven't seen it since it was in cinemas. I read the book not long ago, impressive how they got from that to the movie but it's a great movie. I was actually going to watch it again last night but ran out of time. I'd forgotten the beach scene, think that would be hard to watch again.

I'm a woman btw

do any women like this movie? just curious

― del griffith, Saturday, September 7, 2019 12:58 AM (nine hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

It remains my favourite film of the decade.

― tangenttangent, Friday, September 6, 2019 7:56 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I am a woman and I enjoyed this movie as well as the soundtrack.

https://news.avclub.com/watch-the-fall-a-nightmarish-new-short-from-under-th-1840036328

new glazer short

with mica levi score

I'm a massive Glazer fan but I thought this was a bit ehhh

same

Is it just the BBC who have it online for the UK still?

Yes, it's a BBC production.

Thanks. One of those rare times I'm frustrated as a TV non-licensee. Oh well, I'll wait until it appears somewhere, doesn't sound crucial viewing.

a man of principles!

Or a man of laziness!

Actually got the Opera browser's built-in VPN to work, so I'll watch it later on the US site, once darkness falls.

I agree that it's a bit something and nothing. There's some cool shots and it's decently unsettling, but I thought there was very little to it. Oh well.

I have a coworker who actively dislikes this one and complains about it being recommended to him as horror, but I think it’s very much in the ponderous genre subset and I get that it’s not for all

Do you mean Under The Skin? For clarity, I was talking about The Fall immediately above.

ahh, yeah. UtS

NEW GLAZER

Jonathan Glazer’s THE ZONE OF INTEREST. Coming soon. pic.twitter.com/PZJ3EFj6PS

— A24 (@A24) May 8, 2023

Mentioned in the Cannes thread. A little put off because Amis, but def interested

Rewatched this last night, it's so good — and (not to totally reopen the discussion but) reinforced for me why Zone of Interest was a disappointment. At a certain point in watching Under the Skin again, my wife said, "This really is the ultimate show-don't-tell movie." And Glazer is so good at showing-not-telling (also present in Sexy Beast and Birth in different ways) that the obvious show-AND-tell of ZoI felt like a step back to me.

Anyway, the look and feel and amazing sound of Under the Skin really hold up. It does a lot, narratively and thematically, and stays surprising all the way through.

one of those movies where i came out of the cinema and my perception felt transformed for two or three hours. maybe that’s any good movie actually. but this felt especially potent.

I found this kind of disappointing. V enjoyable in many places, but overall the same kind of long slow shots in lieu of much of anything new, that I'm getting a little bored of. I saw it in the same cinema I saw Upstream Color so I think that has affected my take on it slightly (had a similar reaction to that).

― kinder, Sunday, 23 March 2014 18:02 (ten years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I re-watched it not long ago and I like it a hell of a lot more now.

I need to finally watch this soon