AMERICAN PSYCHO: Cutthroat Businessman

March is Women's History Month, which Post-Credit Coda will take as an opportunity for weekly reviews of films by female directors. Of all the reviews I've written in 2+ years, only four and a half of the movies have been directed by women. Women are slooooowly starting to receive better on camera roles in Hollywood, yet the lack of female directors is a continuous blight on the industry. Unskilled and inexperienced men are typically given far grander opportunities while proven, talented women are ignored. Despite the adversity, some women still manage to bring their projects to fruition. Let's hope that in the future this becomes the norm rather than the exception.

Other Reviews in this Series.

Director: Mary Harron
Writers: Mary Harron, Guinevere Turner
Cast: Christian Bale, Justin Theroux, Josh Lucas, Bill Sage, Chloe Sevigny, Reese Witherspoon, Samantha Mathis, Matt Ross, Jared Leto, Willem Dafoe
Runtime: 102 mins.
2000

I was surprised to find out, in preparation for my second viewing of the film, that American Psycho was directed by a woman. By all appearances it has the hallmarks of hypermasculine filmmaking: A psycho-thriller about the powerful male id brutalizing (primarily) female bodies, in which the only speaking roles for women go to prostitutes, secretaries, and girlfriends. Yet, the fact that it was helmed by a woman makes sense of why American Psycho succeeds as pitch perfect satire despite all the potential pitfalls of such a gratuitous story. In fact, Harron pulls off the neat trick of avoiding gratuitousness on the story level by seating that gratuitousness firmly at the level of character.

American Psycho features Christian Bale's career defining role as Patrick Bateman, a high-ranking executive at a large corporation that apparently does very little of anything useful, as we only see its employees lunching or snorting coke, never working. Of course, this is part and parcel of the all too real satire. Work isn't about work for Patrick or his colleagues. It's about power, status, and style.

But that isn't enough for Patrick, or perhaps it is too much. He is driven by an uncontrollable bloodlust that pushes him to brutally murder other human beings. He has no feelings of empathy, and he is so alienated that he thrives on destroying humanity. We watch him as he tears through a corporate chic lifestyle in public, and tears through flesh in private. As the bodies pile up and the murders becomes more elaborate, we begin to wonder how this obviously imbalanced high status businessman doesn't get caught.

IT FOLLOWS: STDos and STDon'ts

Director: David Robert Mitchell
Writer: David Robert Mitchell
Cast: Maika Monroe, Keir Gilchrist, Olivia Luccardi, Lili Sepe, Jake Weary, Daniel Zovatto
Runtime: 100 mins.
2015

The first and only thing I knew about It Follows before walking into the theater was that it is an allegory for STDs. That's already interesting, but what breaks the movie out of "interesting" and into "fascinating" is that it's so much more than that. Just when you think the film is sinking into its subtext, it's abandoned for pure horror movie thrills. Not to worry though, it always returns to its themes in more complex and circumspect ways than you could reasonably expect from a slashy horror film starring beautiful, sexually active young people. It Follows doesn't fall into the oldest of horror cliches: sex is bad, if you have sex you get killed. Instead it makes that trope the premise, thereby setting it on a pedestal for us to examine its subtleties.

It Follows is a horror movie with a lot on its mind that never forgets to be a horror movie.

The Scariest Movies of My LIFE

In my continuing efforts to disavow all holidays, I will be celebrating Halloween by working at my dad's network tonight. Nonetheless, the last vestiges of my holiday spirit cropped up yesterday and demanded that I do a film-based retrospective.

So here we are. It should come as no surprise that the subject of this retrospective will be horror, one of my favorite of all movie genres. Something about the grotesque... the unknown... the tangible becoming intangible... intangible becoming tangible... it gets me.

Horror fans tend to obsess over their pet genre, tracking down obscure gems and popular turds alike for voracious consumption. My knowledge isn't nearly as encyclopedic as most horror enthusiasts, but hey, that's what the rest of my life is for. In the meantime, I'll focus on what I have experienced.

What you are about to see is not a list of the best horror films I have ever seen. You won't find horror masterpieces like The Thing, The Shining, The Cabin in the Woods, or Psycho. Rather, this is a list of the ten films that scared me the most when I saw them. It's a purely personal compilation. Well-constructed horror films are more likely to terrify, but each of us is frightened by such idiosyncratic things. Bob 1 might find insects terrifying but is unfazed by the threat of stalker psychos in a character's backyard. Bob 2 is unafraid of insects unless they talk, and unafraid of psychos unless they don't. Bob 3 finds anthropomorphic appliances disturbing on a deep existential level. It's a crapshoot: one that I find endlessly interesting. In fact, I would love to hear about your scariest movies.

I'm not a person who scares easily--it takes a lot for a movie to elicit any sort of visceral reaction from me--but we are about to embark on a tour of the ten movies that have done the most to shape the disturbances of my conscious and subconscious imagination.

As they say in the I Spy: Haunted Mansion computer game that I used to play: Enter if you dare... you're in for a scare.

Everything rhymed in that game.

DRINKING BUDDIES: Empty Calories

Director: Joe Swanberg
Writer: Joe Swanberg
Cast: Olivia Wilde, Jake Johnson, Anna Kendrick, Ron Livingston, Jason Sudeikis
Runtime: 90 mins.
2013

Critics have embraced Drinking Buddies as an example of mumblecore hitting the mainstream: a mostly improvised romantic comedy that taps into the charming banality of relationships in an understated way that is rare for the often bombastic, overstated medium of film.

I suppose it is that.  Unfortunately, I also found it to be one of the duller movies I've seen in recent memory.

MANIAC: Cover Your Eyes

Director: Franck Khalfoun
Writers: Alexandre Aja, Gregory Levasseur
Cast: Elijah Wood, Nora Arnezeder
Runtime: 89 mins.
2012

This movie. . .

Let me first say that Maniac combines my discussion of found footage in my End of Watch blog post with my discussion of slasher films in my Scream blog post.  It is a found footage slasher film, without actually being as simple as either one of those things.

Let me second say that if you are squeamish, or don't appreciate being made to feel profoundly uncomfortable, you probably shouldn't watch this movie.  Note that I said "appreciate" rather than "enjoy."  Either way, there is no enjoyment to be had here.